I try to grab on to a beautiful memory. Nothing particularly
special or grand, we’re in the park, Jori playing on the bungee trampoline, me
watching from a distance, smiling because she’s smiling, while eating what
seemed to me then (and still) like the most delicious bar of Twix I have ever
tasted. The memory a few years old, but vivid. Hold it, I say to my heart – my mind
shooting from one negative thought to the next like a monkey - Hold that image. Surrender to it completely. I
can’t describe it in detail, describing it diminishes it; the colours, the
sounds, how the breeze felt, how the trees swayed, the smells, the powerful
feeling of being there, fully there. The ethereal nature of memories, how they
exist so beautifully when not captured in words, or pictures, in the limbo of
time and space, on the edge of reality, in the belly of something resembling a
past.
I am still walking while holding on to my precious memory. Sometimes
I can change what we were wearing that day, today I decide I was wearing my red
coat, Jori was wearing a blue jumper. “I want to be at peace, I want to be at
peace, I want to stop hurting, I want to stop hurting” I wrote in my affirmation journal this morning. I will write
more tonight: “I want to be at peace, I want to stop hurting, I want to laugh
again”. A cockerel wanders out of a front garden. I stop and stare in amazement;
its unusual shape, its mesmerizing colours, the magnificence of its stride. It considers
me with interest for a moment. I am struck by the beauty of its creation. What
incredible imagination, what skill, what majesty can conjure up this being,
this fascinating design?
From my window, I see the old man from the building across, tired
looking, out on his little balcony, smoking. Sometimes, our eye meet for a split
second, he turns his gaze not wanting to seem invasive. In that split second we
communicate, no words, no previous introduction, or encounter. I say how hard
life is, I say how pain - in some twisted way - is good. I say, I don’t approve
of his smoking, but I understand, because I’ve used similar methods of escape
too. He says, don’t worry I’m not a creep, I’m not trying to invade your
privacy, I’m not a pervert sneaking a glance in someone else’s home, I just
need this little release, this little escape, my family won’t let me smoke
inside the apartment. He sits down, in what seems to me like a very
uncomfortable squatting position. In profile, he supports his tilted head with his free
left hand, and lights up another. Behind a selection of dusty brooms, hanging laundry,
and a small empty bird cage, he’s almost completely hidden. He says, life is
hard, and strange, and wonderful.
Somewhere, in another dimensional existence, I’m wearing my
long grey coat, Jori is wearing her fluorescent pink jumper, she’s smiling
while bouncing high up on the bungee trampoline, I’m watching at a distance
smiling, munching on the most delicious bar of Twix I have ever tasted.
