I was in the woods the day things became crystalline. I remember the raindrops - plump, heavy raindrops - and the calf with its glistening eyes and coat of honeyed curls.
I have an admission to make. My memory is not as reliable as I would hope it to be. I am sure there were three or four things that day, on that walk - maybe they are written somewhere on a forgotten piece of paper - but for now, it is the rain and the calf that remain.
The walls that had enclosed my mind for so long expanded outwards, dissolved, even. For two or three years I had been in black and white and grey. Grey - it nauseates me to think of it - so many greys: brownish greys, blackish greys, greenish greys, sickly greys, cardboard greys. My mouth had even tasted somehow grey, my reflection looked grey, my clothes had smelt grey.
But there in the woods, the sunlight through those obscenely clear, cleansing raindrops, wash me back into colour again. Like the moment in The Artist where film becomes colour and suddenly we are awash with the luminance of it.
Something about that calf I still can’t determine - its mother nowhere to be seen, standing in mud yet its coat so perfect, shining liquid brown eyes, as though it weren’t real, a Chagallian motif planted before me.
I am not religious, but in those hours I felt baptised, cleansed, like the calf was a symbol of new-ness, rebirth, the raindrops some kind of holy water rinsing away my sins, the dark thoughts that had gestated, festered within me.
Suddenly my life was the photo that Daniele had given me, her words had materialised magically into reality, something from Sophie’s World. The only reason I know Daniele’s name is because she wrote it under the words, on the back of the photo, the photo she took, of raindrops falling onto dusty grey ground. Otherwise I don’t remember much about her, I don’t remember why we were sitting together in the pub, with her husband, and Asa. I don’t remember how I knew Asa. What were we doing? How can I have forgotten so much? My life was still grey then, perhaps that’s why, so many memories have slipped away of that monochrome time.
Como Alicia en el pais de los maravilias, la luz a veces se encuentre en los lugotes mas oscuros: la solidad, la melancolia, las pelias magniticos con los amores tormentosos.
Pero como los tormentas, todo al final se disuelve en gotas de agua, que la limpian todo.
-- Daniele
"Like Alice in Wonderland, light is sometimes found in the darkest places: solitude, melancholy, magnetic fights with stormy loves.
But like storms, everything finally dissolves into drops of water, which cleanse everything."
But like storms, everything finally dissolves into drops of water, which cleanse everything."
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