Field notes from dusk
When day becomes night ...
The imperfection of love.
It’s the edges that catch you, loosening the seams and leaving you exposed.
I could just run away from it all.
I’ve done that before.
I’ve run far, far away.
I’m still trying to get home.
***
A blackbird trill brings me back into the moment … exquisite notes gliding through the air … clean and pure.
A sweet serenade.
The air hot and coconut warm, stinging the skin it’s been kissing all day.
The sun … it will save you. It will burn you.
***
Other sounds press in on me now … a distant hum of humanised life … the chatter of dusk birds. And far, far away, the swish of the ocean … always there … the celestial push and pull.
***
I felt unhinged the first few months after I returned.
That summer, hot and loose, sofa-surfing, roaming like I was still on the road. It was thrilling and scary at the same time.
Four seasons later, it is different.
I still feel in transit. Not unhinged anymore, but I haven’t fully landed.
***
The same sun still rises to greet me. The same sun still leaves.
***
Sometimes the fantasy has to die for reality to bear fruit.
The problem is, I don’t know which is which.
***
I play the same song over and over again. I’ve always done that, each replay takes me a layer deeper.
Still the blackbird trills, louder now, more insistent.
It’s been a busy day …. it’s been a busy season. I am now dragged out of my hibernation. Mostly.
I feel too deeply to be around people all the time.
I miss them when they are gone.
I miss me when they are here.
***
I am still on the road … in transit … and I realise this. It’s the transitions that disturb the settle … all the comings and goings. Each new arrival heralds a departure.
How can one bear the losses and still stay alive for the arrivals?
Day slips into night, a trance of dusk seduces me ever closer to the edge, but I stay. Staying is as hard as leaving.
And in the staying, more things arrive. The low thud of bass vibration beneath the rushed frenzy of dusk birdsong. It is as if they are saying take me now, lest the night swallows me in her inky depths.
Urgency.
I always was so eager to be chosen, as if the night was chasing me, as if life would expire too soon.
I forgot, I get to choose too.
***
It’s late now, and if I’m not careful, I might say too much. It is always safer to leave a little unsaid, isn’t that what they say? I don’t really know anymore, between the inner happenings and the outer happenings, there’s a lot to notice.
I know when the noticing is too much and I retire. Love has me check the lock one more time before bed.
Am I keeping something in or locking it out?
***
Is anger just another expression of love?