Monday the movers come. They will delve out the boxes, bags, tables and chairs found stacked in the garage and escort them to a newly rented flat in Bloubergstrand. By lunchtime everything accumulated over the years should once again be assembled in the same place. Money will be handed over, the sound of a truck pulling off. Then silence.
In the afternoon I will uncover a past life that’s been waiting mutely in boxes, covered in dust, and as I unpack each one memories will surface (then disperse like clouds overhead). A jumble of forgotten furniture, clothes, my gran’s brown crockery. A book filled with pictures from another life: a happy couple on the beach, at home.
I will re-arrange my life, putting up paintings against the walls, arranging the lounge just so. Friends will come over and throw themselves down on the couch, talk about this and that. It will be my house they’re visiting, my space, my life.
Within a week or two the old contexts of those things will dissolve and I will return to an older version of myself. The girl who lived in Wynberg. The one who runs a business, who writes, jogs, watches dvd’s, goes to the beach, meets with friends, life goes on.
I am the architect of my own existence, picking the elements I want to keep, turning them over in my hands like precious stones, and chasing out of the ones that are no longer useful like old ghosts.
New elements, dynamics, hopes and dreams. New world. New day.
New Alice.
No comments:
Post a Comment