Being Here for You

Dear Rita,

The weather is getting colder. I put on my warm jacket (the red one) and a light green woollen hat and went outside the kitchen door: 

You sit down on the verandah with legs dangling over the side of the low wall. You realize quickly that the moon is full which means that the stars are not at their brightest. There is a moment of disappointment. Your gaze keeps coming back to the moon and then wandering out into the sky. You can still see the Southern Cross and other stars which you can’t identify. You think you can see Venus (but you aren’t sure). You can see craters on the moon and find it impossible to grasp how this bright ball hovers there, illuminating the night throughout time. There is hardly any electrical light; a world almost entirely lit by moonlight. The light is hard to describe now….. a kind of ‘dark light’. You look at the landscape and feel tempted to take a walk but you stay and sit quietly. The quieter you become, the louder the landscape sounds. You focus on the sound. Birds, insects, animals which only exist after dark are all awake, growing louder…singing, chirping, calling, communicating. You want to lie down in the soundscape, the night song; lullaby for a full moon.

Dear Rita,

I think this might have been the best part of your day today…

You aren’t wearing the ‘right’ clothes to move in but that’s ok. At first there is some resistance, maybe tiredness and it also takes time to find music – you decide to put i-tunes on random select so that you do not have to make the choice. Very quickly you feel energised and it’s almost as if the studio is also warming up, coming alive. Your legs are a bit stiff but the rest of you moves easily and freely and takes the space. There is a moment when you imagine dancing and dancing for days but thirty minutes is the time it takes.You like the brushing sounds your feet make on the wooden floors..the floors also creak now and then. You notice how quickly thoughts and feelings come and go. You feel all the uncertainty and the chaos and the fear and the mess of a world in crisis. At some point you even feel angry – it is hard to tell what it’s really about but you feel it constricting your throat.

It was a very good thing to have done. You should consider doing it more often.

Dear Hannah,

Today you wore a dress.

Just before putting on the lipstick, you hesitate. Perhaps because I seldom wear it and also it doesn’t feel totally appropriate to go outside dressed up in these times. Anyway, you go ahead and do it. You leave the house in a floaty, yellow dress with red lipstick (and you even took care of your hair; you wear it down instead of in a bun). You notice that your way of walking is different to yesterday. Slowly you start to like it. Near the cafe on the corner, you lean against a tree. The cafe looks like it’s in hibernation.
You see no one there and you suspect no one sees you. 

I don’t think you have any regrets and I believe you enjoyed feeling the soft and loose fabric of the dress on your bare legs while walking.

Dear Rita,

This morning you had a chance to watch the sunrise over the hill. 

You go outside while the world is mostly still asleep. There is some smoke in the distance (probably people making fires to warm up and to cook). Anyway, the sun suddenly appears and shines straight onto your face, and you close your eyes as it is blinding, (but the warm brightness also feels good). After about ten or fifteen minutes you come inside and you pour some coffee into a small glass. You have to heat the milk. You sit on the couch and watch hundreds of dust particles caught in a beam of sunlight. You think about particles. You like that word  p a r t i c l e s.

You watch those tiny particles floating around for about ten minutes, usually invisible but now made visible by a beam of light shining through a gap in the shutters outside.You sip your coffee. You are interrupted but you let the interruption come and go. You are slightly irritated by it as this is your quiet morning time. Besides watching the dust particles, you think about ‘then’ & ‘now’ and you look forward to a whole day ahead.

Dear Hannah,

In the early evening you notice the light, as it’s still there. It introduces a stretched kind of time that belongs to summer, when the day is over but it is also not yet night. It’s time to stay a little longer; to watch the clouds and the sky and the intensified colours that precede the sunset. That’s what you do. The soft blue mingles with streaks of pink, blues and pinks and purples spread across the sky. A bright dark orange seems to come through the blue, as if it had been waiting behind it, shading the bricks of the apartment building across the street, and as if the light temporarily coates everything it touches with a layer of ‘specialness’. Take a final close look, before the world goes dark.

Only now I read that the rays of the Sun encounter atmospheric particles (like dust and water droplets) when the Sun is just above the horizon, which filter the sunlight, creating this special light, the golden hour. It makes me think of the beam of Sunlight yesterday morning and the floating p a r t i c l e s that became visible.

I had bought some wine earlier, a bottle of Shiraz from Western Cape, especially for the occasion. You are watching a perfectly shaped triangle of birds flying over and start to feel the effect of the alcohol… you are not so used to alcohol these days… It quickly alienates you from your surroundings and ironically it makes you fall asleep before the sun is down.

Dear Rita,

I had been postponing this trip to see the sea, or rather trying to work out the best way, well actually, the best view at a time when it’s illegal to go to the beach. Eventually I realised that one can simply cycle towards the coast (even though also illegal), and I thought of a possible track which would lead closer to the sea.

The day is grey with a cold wind. You cycle along the gravel road with the wind hitting your face. You suddenly wonder whether the sea would be visible with all the clouds, but you continue. At first you go to the best viewpoint where you can watch the sea rolling out forever and hear the crashing rumbling sound made louder by the wind. After a short while you realise that the fence in between you and the view makes the watching feel a little trapped (if I can put it that way) so you cycle and find another road winding towards a small cottage and into the hills. You find a new place which is much more open and you sit down on the rough, short, prickly grass and watch.

A big silvery grey mass moving endlessly, reflecting the shadows of the clouds. Towards the horizon the sea becomes lighter, almost white, and you think you can smell the sea but you aren’t sure as the damp plants around you also smell strong.

It was so good to be alone in this big open landscape watching the sea, despite wondering what would happen if I was caught.

Dear Rita,

I’ve been waiting for a few days to find your way into the landscape alone, to disappear from sight for a while. I had made a rather elaborate plan to cycle and then walk in a place further away, to be certain you would not see people or cars. But funny how in the moment a plan can seem pointless.. 

You walk out of the house just as one would in the city. You open the kitchen door into the garden and then you just start walking further along the ridge of the hillside. If I said to you ‘the hill where the setting sun creates a line’ I think you would know the location I am talking about. You walk until you lose sight of any house and you know no one will encounter you and you know that you won’t encounter anyone. Suddenly a hare with long ears leaps out of the bushes and scrambles up the hill. (Later I find out that this is the Riverine rabbit, it is one of the most endangered mammals in the world, the main reason being that the female only produces one offspring per year.) As it disappears, the sun shines through its long ears and you wonder why it has developed such long ears?

There is no path on the hill that stretches out from the house into the distance and so you just have to walk through this rocky landscape, looking at the remains of a burnt place and at the same time a landscape slowly refreshing itself….so many tiny green plants living between the rocks. And you notice that you can hear the sea in the distance.

After about fifteen minutes of walking you lose sight of houses and a little further on, you find a perfect alcove of stones where you sit down. They’re a little sharp so you have to move onto the ground where a plant has become a ground cover, softer and easier for your butt.

This rocky landscape wherever you turn, gives you a kind of vertigo, harsh without any shelter. Maybe your survival instinct kicks in – if there was danger there would be nowhere to hide…  and then you question the desire to disappear. In this landscape you feel quite exposed and the ‘I’ of you seems to become louder, maybe more visible?

Dear Hannah,

In order to become invisible in a crowd, you need a crowd. Usually that would not be a problem here, but now I have to think about where to find one. 

You set off on your invisible mission. For the first ten to fifteen minutes outside, you notice people on the street looking at you. Perhaps because you are paying attention, or possibly because you are somehow foreign to the environment today. One man asks for your phone number from a distance… is this what happens when you try to disappear from sight? You see your reflection in a shop window and think you are wearing the right clothes for anonymity; jeans and a grey t-shirt. Still, it isn’t until you enter the busier area that you slowly become part of the scenery. You don’t encounter anyone I know and no one looks at you in particular. The kids are playing with the kids. The dogs are barking at the dogs. The parents and the owners are looking at each other across the enlarged space between them (that the children and dogs don’t care about) and you just fit into the scene: a woman walking in a park. Nothing odd or remarkable about it, and so you become one of the trees. One more, one less, no one would notice: You become invisible.

Then you decide to walk barefoot (because of a painful blister) and you have to admit that this isn’t the smartest move. It attracts the attention of almost every person passing you

Dear Rita,

On the day that you have this thought and this wish, and after many weeks of not seeing the kids (lockdowns..), they arrive totally unexpectedly as if out of nowhere and for the first time ever, at the house. They are calling from outside and it’s clear that they are missing the studio, or the time together, or maybe even missing you? You are taken aback by the intimacy of them appearing like this and also touched by a certain boldness they have to come and find you.

Dear Hannah,

This morning, on the second to last day of my visit, I invited my father to go on a walk. He agreed:  

For the first few metres you are walking slightly uphill on a paved road. It’s a little tiring for both of you. There is some tension, most likely because he seems to be thinking that there is something in particular you wish to discuss with him. You consider mentioning that you have no agenda other than enjoying the proximity of another walk together, but you keep quiet. As you leave the house further behind, into the fields he knows so well, onto the dirt roads, the tension dissolves and you share familiar thoughts on familiar topics, like other family members, politics and future plans. You notice how you walk with the same leg in front. 

After some time (and miles), you start talking more about yourselves and inner stirrings, slowing the walking pace. There’s a question, raised by him, that you have to think about for longer. (You are now walking so slowly that you almost seem to come to a standstill.) It goes something like this:
‘Yes ok and what about your personal needs and longings, apart from the ability to attune to others?’
It moves you, the way he’s able to see – you.
Back at the house, you sit for a couple of minutes outside on a wooden bench in silence.
Resting legs, thoughts, hearts.