I dreamt that I'd cried so much that all the colour had leached from my eyes... Turning one of them a soft violet grey and the other the palest seacrest green.
It was without warning that we found ourselves in the Grief Islands... Alone. Adrift. Our lives splintered and shattered. We had lost one of our dearest, before his prime. Our lives will never be the same. I am not sure which one of us first washed ashore on the sandy beaches of Pretendland, breathless and vulnerable... But here we are together, and alone, stranded in its complex archipelago trying to see our way back to the mainland.
Wednesday 26 November 2014
Tears
I dreamt that I'd cried so much that all the colour had leached from my eyes... Turning one of them a soft violet grey and the other the palest seacrest green.
Three Wise Men and an Elephant
"What the fuck are we doing in Mexico?" She said. "I mean Mexico! Of all places. Fuck."
He smiled and shrugged. It was a rhetorical question. They both knew why they were there. It was just that Mexico was the last country on earth she wanted to be in after everything that had happened.
They had missed their flight to Cuba, it was just one of those things. The flight into Cancun had been delayed 30 minutes on the Tarmac and the flight out of Cancun for Havana had left 30 minutes early. Go figure. She wasn't even particularly upset. And hey, he'd wanted to go to Mexico all along.
They were sitting in a "Mexican" restaurant... "Piknik" in downtown Cancun. They'd asked the guy at the hotel desk for a recommendation. What kind of food do you like? He had asked.
"Safe food. I don't want to get sick." he replied. The girl at the desk giggled.
They ordered Fajitas and margaritas... It was Mexico after all. And the food smelled like authentic Mexican food. Like it did the last time she was there, so many years ago. It must be the oil, she thought absent mindedly. The waiter, a tiny happy man who looked Filipino, offered them two for one cocktails and beers. So they ordered both, even though she doesn't drink beer.
She look dubiously at the crushed ice in her margarita but drank it anyway. The fajitas came with salad, he ate his, she prodded hers with a fork.
"Try the cucumber." He said. "It tastes really good. Really fresh."
She eyed him suspiciously.
"You know I don't eat salads in third world countries, I shouldn't have eaten the ice!.
"Just try it." He said. "This is Cancun! the food is... probably safe! Plus it's been peeled." She was glad that he didn't remind her that she doesn't normally eat meat in third world countries either. But she had to eat something.
She ate the cucumber, it tasted really fresh, English cucumber, like her dad used to grow, with the same slightly bitter aftertaste. He smiled at her triumphantly.
The restaurant was located in a narrow pedestrian-only laneway behind their hotel. And their table, out the front, in the warm night air, meant they were prey to a constant stream of hawkers. They were all good spirited and accepted her "no" and abrupt wave of the hand without argument. After a few she realised that a simple shake of her head had the same effect.
First there was a young man in a blue shirt who serenaded them to the strains of a beaten up guitar, then a couple of guys selling souvenirs. A chubby man cruised by with a large bouquet of red and white roses... She thought she smelled aftershave as he brushed past, but it was the scent of the roses that had lingered.
Another guitar player came by, his voice competing with the faint doof doof of a nearby "nightclub" and the intrusive "caterwailing" from the karaoke bar across the way.
"I don't even feel like I'm in Mexico" she said. "I feel lost in
translation again" she continued. "I feel totally ambivalent about being here, unconnected."
"Disconnected." He corrected. But she meant unconnected. He was sipping on the second beer.
"I don't even care that I'm here." She went on. "I should be excited that I'm in another country, but I'm not." She knew she was being grumpy, and she didn't care.
"We didn't plan this." He said. "But we should make the most of it, while we are here." He started channeling his inner Desi Arnaz. Saying things in a thick Spanish accent to make her laugh. What is it with the men her life, she thought, and their love affair with all things Spanish?
She thought about the other one, and pressed the heels of her hands in her eyes in an effort to hold back the tears. They spilled out anyway.
"Hey." He said, trying to distract her from her thoughts. "Come back to planet earth. We are here."
"He would have been so much fun to travel with to these places." She said.
She could visualise him speaking Spanish to everyone, charming them with his way, delighted with himself at their surprise. So blonde, so tall, so blue-eyed, so fair, so pretty. He would have been the centre of attention.
It was only a year ago that he was here in Mexico. Her eyes prickled with
tears once more.
"Fuck!" She said again.
She looked across the street, past the families promenading with their kids and the odd tourist couple holding hands. She could tell the locals, they were dressed simply, short people, even she towered over most of them. The tourists were either earthy backpackers or young couples way over dressed for this seedy bus-station end of town. The girls teetering
awkwardly on ridiculous high heels, clack clacking up the cobblestone lane way. Escaped from their natural habitat of "resort land", they looked so out of place. Two Rastafarians had spread out their wares on an old blanket. Just near them a young Mexican man was juggling pins. No one was
watching.
The waiter arrived offering more beers. "Do you have desserts?" They asked. "No," he replied . "But we have Tequila! You can have Tequila for dessert!" He announced proudly. "Tequila isn't dessert." She said flatly.
"I just saw a girl walking up the street with a bag of churros" she offered as an alternative. she knew he loved churros. "And I think there might be a street fair at the end of the street." He didn't question her, she was invariably right. Years of travel had honed her intuition.
"I have to say..." He said "I really appreciate your calming influence and words of pragmatism in times like these." He was referring to the missed flight and the "change of plans". He looked good, relaxed and happy despite the stresses of the day, his blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She envied him his insouciance.
"It's only money." She said. "It doesn't really matter. I've never placed much value on money. It's a first world problem. I used to say to my kids when things went wrong 'no one is bleeding, no one is hurt, no one has cancer, no one is dead'. I can't say that anymore. There are a lot of things I can't say anymore... "
She fell silent for a minute and then she sighed the heaviest deepest weightiest of sighs. He knew that sigh, he knew it well. He knew not to ask. Her response was always the same and he didn't hold the answers. No one did.
"The worst possible thing that could happen to me, has happened." She continued. "This is nothing. This is a gnat bite. This is just a missed flight. It's not like we had to be in Cuba, we don't have to be anywhere right now." She just wished she wasn't in Mexico. She had been there years ago before Cancun had been "discovered", she had flown into Merida and
visited Chichen Itza, perhaps if they were stranded for a couple of days, she could go back there. Nobody went to Cancun back then, there was nothing there, just an unremarkable town and a stretch of empty beach. She counted in her head the number of times she'd actually been to Mexico. The first time she was 10 years old, she remembered shops full of silver and buying a sombrero in Acapulco... The second time she was 17 and a man in a silver shop had asked her father if he could marry her for all the jewellery in this shop. ...Five times, this would make six.
She watched the juggling man go past, his pins tucked under one arm. His black hair was fine and plaited in one skinny braid that reached almost to the back of his knees. It was warm and humid, 4 nights ago, they had been in New Mexico in sub-freezing temperatures. She'd scrunched through snow.
Travel is weird." She said out loud to no one in particular.
The street was lined with mango trees snaked in fairy lights. They walked past a by-the-slice pizza vendor and shop declaring it sold "hot dogos".
The street opened up onto a night food market with local people, families, friends, young lovers and the occasional backpacker promenading under the yellow glow of street lamps. A wagon train of food stalls surrounded a central space that had been set up for a small open air concert. Churros
stands, taco stands and Icecream vendors. A young man scurried past wearing blue shorts, a singlet and red clown shoes. His face painted as a clown with a small upturned red prosthetic nose.
She watched in fascination at one stall where a man was making marquesitas. He poured the batter skillfully out onto a hot black skillet, once it was cooked he spread it thickly with Nutella and sprinkled it liberally with yellow grated cheese. He then rolled it tightly into a skinny cone shape parcel, smeared the side with a dab of Nutella, placed it in a paper bag and gave it a little top knot of grated cheese. She couldn't quite get her head around the chocolate and yellow grated cheese combo.
In the central area small ride-on battery-operated model cars were available for hire and being driven by a mad chaotic traffic jam of small children. Swarming mindlessly like ants on an anthill.
They passed an open fronted street stall where three men were dressed up as the The Three Wise Men. One on a plastic camel, one a plastic horse and one on a fluffy elephant. It was a set up as a tacky nativity scene where children could have their photos taken with the three wise guys. Like our Santa photos she thought.
"I think Its time we got the cameras out." He said.
He smiled and shrugged. It was a rhetorical question. They both knew why they were there. It was just that Mexico was the last country on earth she wanted to be in after everything that had happened.
They had missed their flight to Cuba, it was just one of those things. The flight into Cancun had been delayed 30 minutes on the Tarmac and the flight out of Cancun for Havana had left 30 minutes early. Go figure. She wasn't even particularly upset. And hey, he'd wanted to go to Mexico all along.
They were sitting in a "Mexican" restaurant... "Piknik" in downtown Cancun. They'd asked the guy at the hotel desk for a recommendation. What kind of food do you like? He had asked.
"Safe food. I don't want to get sick." he replied. The girl at the desk giggled.
They ordered Fajitas and margaritas... It was Mexico after all. And the food smelled like authentic Mexican food. Like it did the last time she was there, so many years ago. It must be the oil, she thought absent mindedly. The waiter, a tiny happy man who looked Filipino, offered them two for one cocktails and beers. So they ordered both, even though she doesn't drink beer.
She look dubiously at the crushed ice in her margarita but drank it anyway. The fajitas came with salad, he ate his, she prodded hers with a fork.
"Try the cucumber." He said. "It tastes really good. Really fresh."
She eyed him suspiciously.
"You know I don't eat salads in third world countries, I shouldn't have eaten the ice!.
"Just try it." He said. "This is Cancun! the food is... probably safe! Plus it's been peeled." She was glad that he didn't remind her that she doesn't normally eat meat in third world countries either. But she had to eat something.
She ate the cucumber, it tasted really fresh, English cucumber, like her dad used to grow, with the same slightly bitter aftertaste. He smiled at her triumphantly.
The restaurant was located in a narrow pedestrian-only laneway behind their hotel. And their table, out the front, in the warm night air, meant they were prey to a constant stream of hawkers. They were all good spirited and accepted her "no" and abrupt wave of the hand without argument. After a few she realised that a simple shake of her head had the same effect.
First there was a young man in a blue shirt who serenaded them to the strains of a beaten up guitar, then a couple of guys selling souvenirs. A chubby man cruised by with a large bouquet of red and white roses... She thought she smelled aftershave as he brushed past, but it was the scent of the roses that had lingered.
Another guitar player came by, his voice competing with the faint doof doof of a nearby "nightclub" and the intrusive "caterwailing" from the karaoke bar across the way.
"I don't even feel like I'm in Mexico" she said. "I feel lost in
translation again" she continued. "I feel totally ambivalent about being here, unconnected."
"Disconnected." He corrected. But she meant unconnected. He was sipping on the second beer.
"I don't even care that I'm here." She went on. "I should be excited that I'm in another country, but I'm not." She knew she was being grumpy, and she didn't care.
"We didn't plan this." He said. "But we should make the most of it, while we are here." He started channeling his inner Desi Arnaz. Saying things in a thick Spanish accent to make her laugh. What is it with the men her life, she thought, and their love affair with all things Spanish?
She thought about the other one, and pressed the heels of her hands in her eyes in an effort to hold back the tears. They spilled out anyway.
"Hey." He said, trying to distract her from her thoughts. "Come back to planet earth. We are here."
"He would have been so much fun to travel with to these places." She said.
She could visualise him speaking Spanish to everyone, charming them with his way, delighted with himself at their surprise. So blonde, so tall, so blue-eyed, so fair, so pretty. He would have been the centre of attention.
It was only a year ago that he was here in Mexico. Her eyes prickled with
tears once more.
"Fuck!" She said again.
She looked across the street, past the families promenading with their kids and the odd tourist couple holding hands. She could tell the locals, they were dressed simply, short people, even she towered over most of them. The tourists were either earthy backpackers or young couples way over dressed for this seedy bus-station end of town. The girls teetering
awkwardly on ridiculous high heels, clack clacking up the cobblestone lane way. Escaped from their natural habitat of "resort land", they looked so out of place. Two Rastafarians had spread out their wares on an old blanket. Just near them a young Mexican man was juggling pins. No one was
watching.
The waiter arrived offering more beers. "Do you have desserts?" They asked. "No," he replied . "But we have Tequila! You can have Tequila for dessert!" He announced proudly. "Tequila isn't dessert." She said flatly.
"I just saw a girl walking up the street with a bag of churros" she offered as an alternative. she knew he loved churros. "And I think there might be a street fair at the end of the street." He didn't question her, she was invariably right. Years of travel had honed her intuition.
"I have to say..." He said "I really appreciate your calming influence and words of pragmatism in times like these." He was referring to the missed flight and the "change of plans". He looked good, relaxed and happy despite the stresses of the day, his blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck. She envied him his insouciance.
"It's only money." She said. "It doesn't really matter. I've never placed much value on money. It's a first world problem. I used to say to my kids when things went wrong 'no one is bleeding, no one is hurt, no one has cancer, no one is dead'. I can't say that anymore. There are a lot of things I can't say anymore... "
She fell silent for a minute and then she sighed the heaviest deepest weightiest of sighs. He knew that sigh, he knew it well. He knew not to ask. Her response was always the same and he didn't hold the answers. No one did.
"The worst possible thing that could happen to me, has happened." She continued. "This is nothing. This is a gnat bite. This is just a missed flight. It's not like we had to be in Cuba, we don't have to be anywhere right now." She just wished she wasn't in Mexico. She had been there years ago before Cancun had been "discovered", she had flown into Merida and
visited Chichen Itza, perhaps if they were stranded for a couple of days, she could go back there. Nobody went to Cancun back then, there was nothing there, just an unremarkable town and a stretch of empty beach. She counted in her head the number of times she'd actually been to Mexico. The first time she was 10 years old, she remembered shops full of silver and buying a sombrero in Acapulco... The second time she was 17 and a man in a silver shop had asked her father if he could marry her for all the jewellery in this shop. ...Five times, this would make six.
She watched the juggling man go past, his pins tucked under one arm. His black hair was fine and plaited in one skinny braid that reached almost to the back of his knees. It was warm and humid, 4 nights ago, they had been in New Mexico in sub-freezing temperatures. She'd scrunched through snow.
Travel is weird." She said out loud to no one in particular.
The street was lined with mango trees snaked in fairy lights. They walked past a by-the-slice pizza vendor and shop declaring it sold "hot dogos".
The street opened up onto a night food market with local people, families, friends, young lovers and the occasional backpacker promenading under the yellow glow of street lamps. A wagon train of food stalls surrounded a central space that had been set up for a small open air concert. Churros
stands, taco stands and Icecream vendors. A young man scurried past wearing blue shorts, a singlet and red clown shoes. His face painted as a clown with a small upturned red prosthetic nose.
She watched in fascination at one stall where a man was making marquesitas. He poured the batter skillfully out onto a hot black skillet, once it was cooked he spread it thickly with Nutella and sprinkled it liberally with yellow grated cheese. He then rolled it tightly into a skinny cone shape parcel, smeared the side with a dab of Nutella, placed it in a paper bag and gave it a little top knot of grated cheese. She couldn't quite get her head around the chocolate and yellow grated cheese combo.
In the central area small ride-on battery-operated model cars were available for hire and being driven by a mad chaotic traffic jam of small children. Swarming mindlessly like ants on an anthill.
They passed an open fronted street stall where three men were dressed up as the The Three Wise Men. One on a plastic camel, one a plastic horse and one on a fluffy elephant. It was a set up as a tacky nativity scene where children could have their photos taken with the three wise guys. Like our Santa photos she thought.
"I think Its time we got the cameras out." He said.
Varanasi
They were different times.
She stood on the banks of the Ganges and there was joy in her heart
and her compassion was far reaching.
She didn’t know.
The storm clouds were already amassing. The darkness descending.
A long way away. Distant. Alone. The world was changing.
Soon everything would have context, but she didn’t know.
Wednesday 19 November 2014
Bella
She knows the sound of my car, even though it's been a while since I lived there. It's still my house, she's still my cat. She is already making her way across the front lawn to greet me before I've had time to pull into the driveway.
She is getting on in years now and her miaow-er is broken. She mimes a miaow or two as she pads towards me, but there is only the faintest trace of a sound.
She flops provocatively on grass a metre from my feet and looks up at me with her limpid blue eyes. I know better than to rub her exposed tummy. I scoop her up in one fluid motion and prop her on my left shoulder,wondering as I always do whether the G-force affects her tiny brain. She starts to purr. If she's happy she'll support her own weight and balance there without my aid. But if she's restless for food she tolerate me for a few minutes before she makes herself a dead weight and leans toward the ground for release. She'll only sit on my left shoulder, not on my right. Not on anyone's right. Only the left.
Sometimes she'll lick my cheek just once, She imprinted on me when she was a tiny kitten. She's still my cat. This is still my house.
Today she is happy to stay on my shoulder, if I lean forward to put her down she will dig her claws in to stay.
I lean against the front porch and watch the wind swirl the leaves in the gumtrees. It's a warm spring day and sky is my favourite shade of eternal blue. I try to remember the happy times but my memories are still fleeting and feeble. Mostly they hurt too much.
I bury my face in the warmth and softness of Bella's fur, so no-one can see the tears.
Bella always smells good. She smells like home... And now more than ever she reminds me of him.
"Have you noticed," I asked Katie once, "that Bella always smells so sweet, like she has the faintest trace of perfume on her?"
"Yes." She agreed. And we debated and laughed about the fact that cats must really just smell like cat spit. Bella spends hours and hours grooming herself, so she must really just smell of cat saliva. It's a weird thought.
It took me a long time to figure out that the fragrance was his aftershave because she spent so much time on his shoulder, or curled up in his lap. She was my cat, but she was drawn to him, he indulged her. It was he who named her Bella. And after Katie and I moved away, she became his cat.
She leans heavily away from me and thuds onto the front steps. Time is up, she must have something better to do now.
Sometimes she sits in his chair next to the computer and sometimes she suns herself in the backyard on the teak chair where he used to sit. And sometimes she slinks down to his room where she tries to burrow under the bedclothes before she is caught.
It took me the longest time to realise she no longer smells of his aftershave.
I know cats. They like to return to their happy places.
Sunday 9 November 2014
Synapse
My eyes traced a string of lights for a hundred miles. A solitary road. The blackness beyond, unfathomable. I was drawn along with the lights. The ground below must have been flat because the roadway hardly altered in its course. I touched my forehead against the oval window and felt the vibration and drone of the engines. The other passenger were asleep, the cabin dark and the window was cold against my skin. Mesmerized I kept watching, Sleep eluding me. We were flying between here and there, somewhere above somewhere. The Middle East I mused, but I had no real sense of time or place.
Every now and then the road would divide and led off in another direction and following with my eyes, the road would explode into a bright oasis of dazzling lights. Too regular a shape to be a village, too small for a city, a rectangle of lights framing a central glow. The cluster of lights looked like a walled palace or compound or an industrial estate ...a single road leading to it from nowhere in particular. My eyes flicked back to the main road as it traversed invisible terrain and I followed its path until eventually it lead to another glowing palace.
Every now and then the road would divide and led off in another direction and following with my eyes, the road would explode into a bright oasis of dazzling lights. Too regular a shape to be a village, too small for a city, a rectangle of lights framing a central glow. The cluster of lights looked like a walled palace or compound or an industrial estate ...a single road leading to it from nowhere in particular. My eyes flicked back to the main road as it traversed invisible terrain and I followed its path until eventually it lead to another glowing palace.
My thoughts go often to those strings of lights now, because that’s how my memories of him form. In clusters that bunch together like inflamed synapses. Raw. Intense. Emotions huddling around street corners, his old school, the streets where I taught him to drive, his kindergarten, his best friend’s house... all of the places he inhabited. And in between the nerve endings, the memories thin out along gossamer threads that connect to one another so ethereally. The in-between places are where I can breathe.
The strings join all the places he has been, the places where the memories reside and the places where I feel his loss so acutely. The memories hang together like those illuminated "Palaces of light" in the desert, strung together with rows of lanterns. I walk through them. I pass by them, sometimes in my car, sometimes on foot. Sometimes I linger and sometimes I hurry by... trying not to get caught in their filaments. Globular clusters of starry matter thick with energy and nuance and context. As I approach I feel a billiard ball clump in my throat and my breath labour and my heart clench. And as I come out the other side, the symptoms wane and I doppler-back into the now.
“Try and breathe through it.” My psychologist advised. “Control your breathing, tap your meridian points, bring your focus back to the present.” But its not always easy. Sometimes I tarry in those emotionally charged nebulae and sometimes they cling to me like a tear drops welling on a spider’s web.
The lights shine so brightly in some locations that I still expect to see him. In the supermarket. I bumped into him there once, not expecting him to be there and now each time I go there the memory is as sharp as a shard of glass. If I walk to the end of the row, if I turn the corner, will he be there, dressed in his summer shorts and a well-loved, well-washed T-shirt. Hairy legs. Shopping basket over one arm. Grinning because he is so glad to see me. The expectation is too real for it not to be real.
There is the grey "Besser" block corridor that leads from the underground car park at work to the back of my studio. I photographed him there once. Lit by one of three fluorescent tubes. He was wearing a pale blue singlet and jeans and his signature white leather Lacoste shoes. His pimp shoes we used to call them. But he was unfazed, he could care less of what we thought of them. He loved them... He had posed for me, leaning slightly forward, looking tough, biceps and blonde hair. His arms pressing against the walls on either side, muscles flexing. Just 20 years old. I step through that memory twice a day. The fluorescent light is ironically on-its-way-out now, flickering a sickly pink light. Not the one on either side, but the one he stood underneath. Sometimes, foolishly, I touch the wall that he touched.
As if.
The street corner near his high school. I get such a strong sense of him there. Tho' I can’t recall ever seeing him there. I know he crossed at those traffic lights every school day. But I can’t remember him in his school uniform. I can’t conjure up one memory of that. Whether he wore long pants or shorts or whatever shoes he wore.
At the airport, the last place I saw him happy and well, embarking on a new adventure. He had packed characteristically light. His leather carry-on was visibly empty. They were going to Mexico so he could practice his Spanish. His girl with shiny eyes. Going home for the holidays, Christmas in the snow. I can’t walk easily past that point. The memories sear. If I stop there I will burn, I step quickly over a threshold that only I can see, through memories that mar my vision of what is ahead.
“Do you want me to come to the airport to see you off?” Katie offered before my last overseas trip. “No. Don’t.” I replied. “I can’t say goodbye to anyone I love there anymore.” Not there, not next to the sign that reads International Departures.
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