At seven this morning I stood with the cool tide of the ocean washing up over my feet. The early morning haze adorned the horizon. Specks of amber still fragmented through the open palm of the sky. Half seven standing with the tide washing up over my feet. I vanish. I appear. My wet footprints dry in the morning sun. No wave is ever the same as the last. The shore holds me. I vanish. I appear. I watched the stones behind the glassy surface of the edge of the waves that rippled in stills then raptures drifting to shore. A cool breeze traced my skin. It slipped itself under my t-shirt. Held the warming skin. It was a lover’s hands wrapped around my stomach. In the rising heat of the morning, the cool breeze traces a shiver across my skin. In the rising heat the sea, open, endless. Tempts. No two waves are ever the same– whether they reach the shore then or now. Those tides speaking in stills and raptures. When I was younger, I wondered how my grandparents, parents, could sit for hours in the same place, not really doing anything, just watching, observing. Now I understand. The magnetism of it; I understand the beauty of it. In the heat, sat in one place, whether it be sun or shade ( I think the summer has a way of turning shadows into philosophers) even the most gentle of breezes can feel like a saviour. In the rising heat, a cool breeze beckons off the glass top of the waves. It holds me like a lover. It does not speak of its coming nor its going, but we both understand one of us must leave.
In the haze of the morning, I dream. Turquoise, light blue. What is more sensual than the sea– pushing herself forwards to pull herself back, pushing herself forwards to pull herself back. The rhythmic melody of her desire after all these years— the language she speaks lost to time. Pushing herself forwards to pull herself back— having watched the shifting of the land, does she still dream? The primordial desire. The sea. And still after all this time she is gentle. She rocks, pushing and pulling, at my ankles. After all these centuries of desire, she is gentle. She ripples to shore, filled with a thousand secrets. The sea, the oldest memory, rocking herself slowly in desire.
The summer comes and each time I am filled with passion and a deep longing. Maybe it is the heat, the humidity it brings. The long evenings, shorter nights. In the rising heat of these days I cannot sleep. I watch my ceiling. I wonder if there were always this many cracks. For the past two nights the sky has burned a-flame, in deep pinks and lilacs, burnt siena and terracotta. I find myself mesmerised each time– those flames, gentle dancers. What does the night hope for? Does the sun know it will rise for us once more? I wake early. Often I lie in bed doing nothing for half an hour. I have never before slept with a fan in my bedroom. I wake and it greets me now. Circulating the warm air up and down my body. Its rhythmic sound awaits me. Lulls me to sleep. There is something in its rhythm that reminds me of when I would wake in my grandmother’s house to the sound of the shower running. These sounds are completely different. There is a sparse correlation between them. But I cannot separate them.
Eleven o’clock home; listening to the moka pot on the stove. Mid day heat walking slowly across the garden (through the gate) to my grandmother’s greenhouse. Hot air greets me as I slide the door open. It is these small rituals I survive for.
In the heat the smell of the tomato plant encompasses all. It is a scent that lingers on the skin. The light reflects in mosaics off the dirty glass panels that make up the green house. I used to wonder how my grandmother could spend so much time confined in a small space with the sun glaring down onto her skin. But even then, stepping into the warm embrace of shards of light, air intoxicated by the smell of wet earth and spiralling vines, I understood then, what I still understand now, how enchanting the space of a greenhouse really is. There is a certain mysticism that lives in the greenhouse, and it is the same certain mysticism that lives within the sea. That glass top of the currents turns even the oldest of stones into ripe fruit. Under the warmth of the glass, air embellished in fragrant scents, all seems to still. Inside those glass walls, everything seems quiet. Some days when I was younger, my grandmother used to hang cotton clothes over the opening of the door, and sit in the small space of shade created. She’d go inside and I’d watch it swaying back and forth; I’d watch it, or more so, I was possessed by it ( I think this might be where my love of moving fabric really began). That small cotton dish cloth creating shade on the stone floor of the greenhouse was enchanting— its very essence intoxicated me. I could not look away. It beckons and it dances and I’d watch it from a distance, an exile from its inner world.
Though the washing on the line danced the same, in its own equally as intoxicating manner– especially when it is being hung and the shadows of hands creep through the fabric– the open door of the greenhouse shrouded in this swaying piece of fabric followed me into my dreams. I’d wake from dreams of doors covered in long pieces of fabric, almost too long, that bunched onto the ground beneath them, but still were just not long enough to touch the floor and swayed, controlled by a secret element. I’d be walking and never reach it, or I’d reach it and only find another long stretch of earth and another door awaiting me. Some dreams were open fields, long stretched and at mercy to the sun that poured down like honey. Doorways stood in strange places. Next to towering oak trees, half way through a stream, a top a hill and alone in fields, each covered with the fabric that moved like a feather falling from the sky.
For years the greenhouse stood empty, no life grew, and the panels grew slick in rain. In the winter, frost clung like lonely prayers to the unpolished surface. In spring, blossoms from the tree next door adorned it. It stood like the dead never buried. Covered in little pink and burgundy flowers it asked: after all this time, do you still need me? In summer it refracted light and made spirals on the dirty stone floor. In the early autumn heat, bats flew above it and dried leaves fell from the tree above. Winter came again and frost crept along its edges. Spring came once more and reminded it again of the lack of life growing inside; it stood like Jesus on his lonely tower watching back at me from across the gate. Summer came and the door crept opened slightly. A butterfly flew inside and I watched my grandfather carefully guide it out. The door was closed. The summer passed. Autumn came and the burning nights painted it terracotta. The winter came again, thick in fog and rain, and water dripped down its body, it wept. When will I feel life again? I watched the closed door from a distance. I did not enter. It is this unwillingness that left my hands empty mid prayer.
Spring came, embellished it in pink and burgundy. Last summer came and one day I found the door wide open. I found I still worshipped the light that found itself reflected off the glass. In the doorway I felt a thousand wounds on my palms. Even after all this time, the scent of tomato vines still perfumed the air. It was subtle. Hidden beneath the years of warming and cooling dirt.
Beatrice.
absolutely beautiful <3