In the City of Men - Day 5

La lucha continúa.
Estee Lauder Idealist pore minimizer appears to wage a war against this thick, reddish skin that I inherited from my grandmother who kept a hen in the balcony. Although the leaflet states that the effect is instantaneous, after several applications my skin didn't loose more than 10% of its class identity. Well, it is not red any more; at least for my standards, I would qualify it as a quite satisfying peach shade. 
I wonder why I never actually solved any such problems. Why I let myself live with all this inheritance. Perhaps it's time to leave things behind. Especially because they are not true, not real; they are just shadows. My class identity? In purely sociological terms, I haven't been a real working class for some 30 years or so; I might even claim to be a lower upper class. What is the hen in the balcony still doing here?
And why still adjusting the accounts with my old country, that has just voted itself, once again, out of the civilised world, or at least, out of my world?
Everything to leave behind. I hardly find anything that remains, as if a silent hurricane were passing through my life. 
I face the City of Men, with all options widely open in front of me. Worried only to be at the height of my challenge. I'm not invisible, at least not to the acute senses of some races of men. The true difficulty lies elsewhere. In getting rid of all habits, of all the burden of times when I had to squeeze respect and romance out of barren rock. Of memories. Of traumas. Of lies. Of betrayals. Perhaps Estee Lauder have no effect on me because what I have encrusted in the pores of my skin are lies, betrayals, traumas, memories. Calcareous deposits of romance extracted out of barren rock.
The City of Men offers everything, or nearly everything that is possible to find across a variety of human cultures and beyond. What shall I pursue? What kind of ideal? After so many years that I appreciated to live alone, will I put up with living with someone? Is it still feasible? Is it worth it? Will I opt by some sort of corrected or upgraded version of my former choices? Try something completely new that I didn't even see as an option before? Certainly, I could enjoy the freedom of casual encounters, of adventures, that might be interesting and inspiring in their own right. Equally, I could opt by a religious marriage, a community of lifestyle, an eroticised companionship. I suppose there are still many other options.
Most probably (as far as I can get clear insight into my own feelings), what I search in the first place is an ideal of integrity, beyond the mendacity that followed me like a shadow across my life. I speak about the mendacity of desires and fantasies taken from porn movies, even more than fake orgasms or serious cheating. The falseness in the roots. Lack of purpose in love.
I redefine the basics, strive to answer the fundamental questions. What actually is the purpose of love-making? Procreation, the Catholic church might say, and I suppose some people in my old country believe this sort of things. Obviously, my own religion has an answer for such questions as well, that might be translated into Western terms by such a statement as "(marital) sex brings about Grace" (although this translation is misleading at various levels). I suppose some Protestant churches might come close to such an affirmation as well. Beyond any catechism, I would answer for myself that love-making brings about some sort of ideal. The strain to make oneself lovable that leads to some sort of development and fulfilment. Certainly, that's a Platonic answer, but doubled with this monotheistic shadow that comes from a different source. 
I think this is what I was missing these last four years or so. Without this unfalsified love-making I am after, I became oblivious of myself, and as a consequence, unfulfilled, unaccomplished, blocked in the middle of a cycle. I forgot to take seriously my own becoming.
This is where my husband failed. He believed, either in full awareness or without seeing it so clearly, that making us break taboo after taboo will lead to improvement of some sort, to discovery or exploration, to becoming mature or insightful, at least in the matter. It led us into a nasty piece of swamp with no coordinates and, as I am afraid, very dubious Grace. 
I happen to possess a very beautiful pair of silver khulkhal that I brought from I don't remember which of those travels of mine. For several years it has been nailed to the wall between my bookshelves as an oriental curio. A pair of khulkhal nailed to a wall! Like a wolf in a cage, like the very sadness of things put in a place where they definitely do not belong. It's first time in years that I put it on my ankles. I suppose, by fidelity to that God who loves beauty.