"This bookend summer of the world I've had this year has split me open and spilled over the ink on my pages, on my skin, Nepal and home and in between and South Africa, and what. sorry. How did this end. this was never even supposed to happen, was never supposed to be a plan that actually happened.
and then life went and did this thing where it happened."
like how I left South Africa.
But before that, how Nepal happened. And then camp, after graduations and congratulations and old friend conversations. How I will not see your faces for a year or so starting now, Adriana and Daniela and Kelsey, Erin. How my brother is moving out. How student visas are stamped into my passport.
How I missed a flight only to arrive.
How I arrived, Jozi, Joburg. Maneo. And mum and Tshepiso and Gran and the Greenhouse, all now, all just now.
How 51a became home, and nights on couches and idols extra and MasterChef South Africa and ancient aliens and so you think you believe you like to gyrate and tea and heaters. How the morning shutters rolled up and light burst in with the garden and the Greenhouse for Saturdays. How we walked through a corner of Leondale and the dust covered my shoes in wintery sunlight and how warm we make the house, all of us and the soccer match. Sesotho, rolling, lovely, warm around me. How we bought cookbooks and boots and told how this happened here, that was where, that was where. How we stayed until the lights shut off in the apartheid museum, 1989 and fill in the details of after in an empty parking lot, sitting on a curb and the sunset in our eyes. Conversations on race. Impossibility and flipsides of spectrums and mindsets and frames and location. How my feet were cold and how Dad found me slippers. How we ended our evenings together.
How names from stories became people, in my life now. Reminiscing around kitchen tables and talking evolution and not baking for the shady boys but food is there all the same, and rusks and rusks, tea and rusks. How the doorbell rang for Eric and we missed it. Gangster sounds for the night drive to 012, and candles hanging in Afrikaans cafes--coolest or cruelest?--and high speed reverse car driving, dining and dashing and drinking.
How I met Tayla at the theatre and chats were had, chats everywhere and all the time, deep chats and light chats and life chats and long chats and joke chats, walk the talk chats and naps. Given me a sense of how this goes, was, is, unlike anything I've ever lived. How I never expected this.
Benoni and wide land and township houses and hospital visits and this is day by second by every minute my family now. Mugg and Bean afternoon and I think I know the sound of the ground beneath my feet, where we walk in the kitchen, bake bread.
Driving past places and through places, breakfasts and lunches, the men in the middle of the streets selling adapters and art work, car guards and shup shup, proteas in flower shops and the Sandton jungle-city and rich people and doorsteps and inescapable inequality and the colours of the South African flag now.
Mason jars of juice and holding hands in shopping malls and remembering, who we are.
Cape Town flight with spacious seats and landing and green, a lot of it, the salt in the air and knowing the sound of it on your lips. Forgetting how much the ocean is and means, just across it, just over that horizon, not but still the same horizon I've lived with for two years now and knowing you are just there, Francis and Sean and Chloe.
Five story houses and elevator lifts and a mountain there and everywhere is just ocean, a carpet meant to be high on, headboards made for hands and hysterics on couches, cappuccinos and whirlwind driving. Winding roads and scenic routes by the ocean at sunset, twelve apostles and lionshead and table mountain. All the niceness and then college gritty, Sibi and her amazing crowd, and I love it, long vodka conversations by the fridge, race and politics and where you come from and language and 30 seconds.
Hand twitches and walks on beaches and tea in the afternoon turned wine by evening and silence, words around you, deep chats for Friday nights, Saturday mornings on the waterfront turned entire day, views and aquariums and pregnant spaces. Kyle and Non and Shiraz, crashing on mattresses and windy nights, long mornings of tea and grey skies, house mates and guinea pigs.
Afternoons of feet under blankets and reading and naartjies on account of colds, shining and unsettled, Tshepang and macaroons and magazines, Afrikaans which I cannot speak. Vooooooooete. Paris and theatre and language and the power of the stage again. Tea and chats, can you notice a theme here?, dark drives and late nights.
Rainy days and company gardens and the butcher boys, art and then sweet wine, the sky still light out after the Labia. Mabu vinyl. Chilli hot chocolate and rain that lashes around nighttime street lamps, shadows of plants and moving hands.
Chakras and life lessons by the seaside, splash and jump and play in cold Atlantic water, squelch feet into sand and drip sea salt. Gatsby parties and champagne and last nights in places. Breakfast and Kenny and colourful homes and Astros and lunch bars, take us home on a plane and the Jozi sunset fills the whole sky, talk of goodbye because we are not good for it, and when we get home, I can smell home in the air, and I think I know now.
Last week, days, practical pranks that are not so, movie times and forehead kisses and The Phantom Tollbooth, cake and days and about/out/house, not a countdown, jazz that steals all of the air in my lungs, don't make me move on , and then it is.
"Go well".
Zebras and springbok, charcoal for the braai, playing crocodile. Breath on car window glass, "bye Kelllllyyyyyy".
Polo and all the pretty people, cozy up on the couch (fitting) and look up look up look up, don't stop no don't cry I won't and I do, into the morning and around the corner and so much.
Blink...blink...blink.
I don't know where this time went and I don't know how I'm writing this in another metal tube returning to the country of origin. I don't know how I left and I don't know how I'm gone.
I don't know when these weeks escaped or what to do with myself and I am leaking emotions in public places and I would apologize if it mattered more what I look like, but everything now has happened.
I left my family on Monday, and standing in line for the first leg of the flight to Frankfurt I bit my knuckle to keep from sobbing and wrote messages for the people who are people in my life now, and I realized that this is it this is it this is it, what I hung my hat of summer on has already happened.
Leaving this time was impossible (no thanks to Eric, whose mixed tape of the day we met and Pretoria tapes are writing this with me) because it is the last leave, the final goodbye, the end of an impossible four months that I could not believe had actually happened. And now I will be back in Canada and I will have empty days to fill with work and writing and words and yoga and trying not to miss what I will not be there for and looking for housing across an ocean.
I'm so very now that even that doesn't exist. And all the tears for now are not in fear or regret of what's to come, but literally are just for now. I'm not sure how far I can look ahead at all because now is just now. All I've got is now. (excepting transit times like this. this is my empty space in an unreal metal tube that doesn't count as reality, lets me wander through thoughts and words and on-flight movies)
So I think I'm going to place this bookend of my life back where it came from and try to twist this leaving into the rest of what's to come, as much as is possible to avoid any sense of end. We are not ending, ever....just moving. There is not a left behind but a let go, a let go that moves with it into a different space and different place still housed by the same love and stretched and moulded.
Before I get away with this, I will leave it here. Wonder at the happen-status of this life and never understand how it is that this works.
there is rain on the roof of home in Canada and I can hear it, watch it drip green and grey from the window, enough for now to see how very much I don't know how to be here, how I miss the words and the life that told me
I will see you just now.
-k
