Xiomara and the Tortoise: A Mythos of Existence

I am really excited about OutLook Theater Project's newest endeavor: The God Project. Spirituality, religion, and faith fascinate me. So too does the lines of sexual and gender identity. I am thrilled we are exploring these borders, edges, boundaries, and identities. It gives me hope. We can reframe the conversation.

All of OutLook's ensemble members -- Lynn Johnson, Rebecca Schultz, and I -- were tasked with writing out our personal perspective on religion/faith/spirituality and its intersection with sexual and gender identity. We wanted to share with you, our fabulous fans and readers, what is going through our heads as we explore these intersections and the dynamism they contain. Each one of us has a very different point of view, and we want this project grounded in that pluralism. This isn't about promoting one thing, idea, faith or philosophy. It is about listening, seeking connections, and finding truths. It is about both, in theater speak, window and mirror moments -- times when we shed a light or reflect back that which we see, hear, and feel.

It is crucial that we as queer people reclaim the dialogue of faith, spirituality, and religion. Inherently, the struggles we face give us a unique perspective. We live between -- between basic civil rights and no rights, between acceptance and rejection, between mainstream and counter cultures, between families of origin and of choice -- which means that we are given an opportunity to see things differently. It means nuance. And these nuance matter: they form the basis of pluralism.

To add to that nuance, I am sharing my perspective.

I can never do anything the way it is prescribed. We were supposed to write personal perspectives. I tried. I really did. But as I sat in the cafe meditating on what to write, I found myself scribing the fable below. It is called Xiomara and the Tortoise: A Mythos of Existence. I believe it sheds more light on my beliefs and faith than anything non-fictional I could have written.

Hopefully, it provides some window and mirror moments.

***

Xiomara walked the wet edge between high and low tide with bare feet. She loved the feeling of the cold sand and broken shells between her toes. She'd twist her heels back and forth until her feet sank deep into the sand and were completely covered. Then, she'd kick spraying sand and bits of sand dollars and seaweed everywhere. Sometimes, when the sun was low and the cold ocean air whipped her curly black hair around her head, she'd dig her feet even deeper until the balls of her feet felt something hard underneath. She'd pretend that it was the hard earth, that she'd dug her way to its bedrock. She loved even more the feeling of solidness beneath the cold and the wet and the broken.

One winter night -- the night of the full moon before solstice -- she straddled twilight with her feet wide apart and deep beneath the sands. She found that patch of solid and waited for the sun to set and the moon to rise. She stood there in prayer -- a quiet meditation on all that has been and is yet to come -- immobile as if a stop watch paused. The sun did not sink. The moon did not rise.

Ten minutes or ten years passed and still nothing moved. Xiomara lost in prayer waited for something to stir, to spark a memory hidden deeper than her feet. And there it was in a wiggle of her small toe on her right foot. It was the remembrance of something greater or possibly beyond. It was the hint of visions and dreams of hopes lost to consumption. It was the traditions of ancestors trapped in blood. It was entirely of her and entirely not hers.

She felt those remembrances and hints and traditions move her skyward. She was rising from the sands and transcending the setting sun and rising moon. The coldness and the wetness and the brokenness was a solid, warm, dry. She was standing on the back of a giant tortoise who flew into the clouds.

"My dearest Xiomara," said the tortoise in a voice that spoke not of gender but of age. "I have heard the prayers you do not know you prayed. I know the hopes whispered by the oceans and hidden by the sands. I know why you walk that edge and flick sand skyward. I have been watching and waiting. I am the solidness you have always felt."

Xiomara spoke not in words but in gestures as she danced upon its back. Her arms waved slowly and gently above her head as her fingers spread wide like a paper fan about to break. Her hips rolled in all directions less fluid than a belly dancer but not as sharp as a rumba. Her feet were like a ballerina's: pointed and soft.

The tortoise responded humming a melody wandering keys. The song reverberated through its body sending shivers up legs and out fingertips. Xiomara quickened her tempo until frenzy gave way to collapse. Her body laid prone on its back as it continued its ascent to the heavens.

"I am taking you to my home, to the land beyond history and the country greater than time. I want to show you, my dearest Xiomara, the one of whom I have grown so fond, the possibilities of nothing. I believe you are ready. For you know how to wait; you know how to be between."

They were almost at the home of the tortoise. It was there it would reveal its final truth to Xiomara.

During their ascension as Xiomara laid prone on its back and as the stars faded into black and the black gave way to nothing, the being known as Xiomara slowly evaporated. Each chromosome became obsolete. Each memory became a silhouette. And left behind was a small -- smaller than the tiniest quark and more imperceptible than abstraction -- piece of some thing.

The tortoise too consumed by its own desire to reveal truth didn't notice her evaporation nor the some thing on its back. It had lived too long amongst the realm of earth -- of things tangible -- that it had forgotten the laws of its home. It was not supposed to bring some thing back with it. It was the only thing allowed existence in nothing.

As the tiniest speck of blackness disappeared, the some thing collided with nothing obliterating the tortoise. Its thousands of years vanished. And so too did the tortoise's truth.

Born of that collision was a new tortoise. It was the only thing in the nothing. It didn't know of Earth or of Xiomara. But every once in a while, it would have a faint dream of sand between toes and the space between high and low tide. It would get a shiver through its body that resembled a dance it once had upon its back, and it would yearn.

That yearning became some thing, which produced a new collision obliterating the tortoise and birthing a new one.

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