Week five of blue skies

The Easter weekend came and went. I spent some of the time sitting on a wooden bench and some of it rubbing baby lotion into my feet. I spent time curled up on my yoga mat in the foetus position, licking the last of the Terry’s chocolate orange from the silver-foil wrapper, while singing along to the songs of Dolly Parton.

“Don’t call it love, coz heaven’s above, we got a better thing, baby”.

I spent time reading Werner Herzog’s “A Guide for the Perplexed” which meant that I was narrating a lot of my domestic chores in the voice of Herzog, for my own amusement.

“And here is Ruth now, in the kitchen of discontent, preparing a coffee for the broken hearted and pouring it into the cup of honest solitude. She tries to keep some rituals in life’s chaos which soothes her and yet paradoxically makes her long for the old forgotten world”.

I say reading. Reading is getting more and more difficult now though isn’t it? It’s really just staring at words with the vague hope that their silky, snaky slitherings will eventually make sense. If you stare at them for long enough, they will.

I spent some time watching people queuing up for confession at the Church in our street and I wondered what on earth they were confessing? Sins are pretty hard to do these days, no? I mean obviously I’ve been guilty of gluttony and envying my neighbour’s oxen, but apart from that it’s nearly impossible to commit any of the interesting sins, isn’t it? Actually, I’ve been thinking more about cows than oxen. In particular, I’d like to know where all the McDonald’s cows have gone now that we’re not eating them? Is there a special Cow Farm where they’ve all gone to retire, eat grass and discuss Jung? That’s taken up some of my time.

Can you believe it’s only week five though?

It seems like a long time ago that we used to go to the office and meet people in the evenings for things like the cinema or food or beers. Sometimes we would do all three things in just one evening! Perhaps you used to send texts to friends that said things like “hey, let’s just meet for a beer before the film, and grab a bite to eat afterwards, OK?” Sweet Mother of Jesus, all three things in just one night. Hard to remember isn’t it?

Since the 12 March I haven’t been within six feet of anyone outside of my household for longer than a moment or two in the supermarket, the street or the hallway in my building. The last person I spent real time with was Patricia, who was visiting Dublin from Lima. We spent that morning talking about pea farming in Peru, and how the timing for the harvests are so specialised and precise. The difference between picking the crop from one day to the next can be the difference between being able to sell the peas or not. It’s a very delicate business; planting, growing and harvesting peas in the rural areas of Peru.

Do you know what makes all of this so odd though? It’s like this; say you’ve been on a trip to Tanzania for a month right, and you come back and you tell everyone all about Tanzania and they want to hear more and they listen carefully. But then, you meet someone who’s been to Tanzania for six months, so now it’s you who must listen to them for insights and anecdotes. Then both of you come across a third person who is married to a Tanzanian and has two Swahili speaking children. Everyone knows where they are in these situations: there’s the one month person, the six month’s person, and the fully integrated person. It’s easy to follow.

In this new reality we have all just arrived in Tanzania and we don’t know how to get from the airport to the city centre. We are all dithering about in the arrival’s hall. Some people are weeping, and some people are upset about the luggage and someone doesn’t have a visa. People are cross, tired and very annoyed with one another and some people are wandering off to the toilets. I just want someone to walk up to me and say “hey, you want to get a taxi to the hotel?” and for me to nod and say “yes, please”.

Is that so much to ask?

My friend Annie called me Tuesday and told me that she was finding week five very manageable and almost like an exclusive, avant-garde retreat. I agreed with her but then I told her about the dead rat I’d seen on the pavement on my way back from the park that morning. I said that I didn’t know what had taken its head and shoulders clean off, if it was a fox or perhaps a larger rat? Then Annie said that she didn’t feel that much better after all, and she said goodbye and hung up the phone.

On the whole though, I think I do feel better this week. I’m not worrying less, but I’m monitoring the worry better. I’ve even caught myself using the present tense to describe my daily activities, which as we all know denotes regular routine and habit. “Yes, usually I do a yoga class on Tuesdays” I’ve said to friends, or “I like to sit on benches on Saturdays”. So at least linguistically I’m getting used to the intensity.

But please don’t fret if things are not getting better where you are. We all have our own dragons to slay and we’re all doing our best. I’ve a fucking kitchen full of dragons, but for some reason they seem to be sleeping, for the moment. Lord knows what will happen when they wake up, but at least this week they are snoozing.

While they sleep I wonder if the skies were always this beautiful, this striking azure and cerulean? Did I always have such hiraeth for Wales? Did a glass of sparkling water with a slice of lemon always taste so refreshing? Were sunsets always this poignant? Did my body ever thank me so much for resting when tired and waking when done? Was I always this frightened? Did the sound of the birds in the morning always make me smile so much, and were the skies ever or always this blue?

Posted by ruthelizabethpowell.