I’m pausing the unpacking of boxes, the wiping down of things sticky from months of not being touched by fussy hands, the oiling of furniture and the rearranging of cupboards.
The day is bright and mild, like yesterday was, when I went to the Mouille Point to find a trader who sells things I want to buy people for Christmas. She wasn’t there though. I walked along the promenade for a while, trying to tamp down the feeling I’d forgotten existed while I was away from my life for eight months — the feeling that there is no time for anything as unplanned as a morning stroll in the middle of a mission.
I smelled the kelp warming on the rocks and looked over the railing into the water that looks warm but is so icy I seldom swim in it anymore. Runners came past. In the outdoor gym, men glistened and rippled. At the putt-putt course, a group of boys in red T-shirts cheered after one of them got a ball in the hole.
I walked past the boat garages where a boyfriend, who stored his jet ski here, and I used to sit on summer nights drinking beer and trying to predict the next gull to suddenly become visible in the dark sky around us. They have this strange way of being invisible in the night until they are right above you.
How strange that I once had a boyfriend with a jet ski. He and I used to roller-skate here too. This is the place where the poet Ingrid Jonker died. I came here when I finished translating her love letters in August of 2016. It was a miserable day and I felt so sad I wanted to cry but I didn’t know what I would be crying about. About her and her hard life? About her suicide? Or was it just the emotion of finishing a demanding job?
Where the old maze was, I noticed yesterday, something is going on. It’s been fenced off and some structures have been built that look like birds’ nests, but big enough for humans. I wonder what it will become. Maybe the city is renting the space out to some sort of a commercial venture.
And there was so much sky. There is so much sky. The muchness of sky here surprised me even though I missed its expanse while I was gone. Did we get more sky in South Africa than other places did? What did we do to deserve all this brilliant blue?
Yesterday evening, we went to an outdoor movie at the botanical gardens. My eyes kept straying from the screen to the vast indigo sky where planets and stars and the odd aeroplane winked. The wind, which had whipped dust into every cleaned crevice the previous day had stopped in the early morning hours. Earlier in this windy season, it had ripped a piece of cornice off in the kitchen. Dust now comes streaming down on to the stove from the exposed red bricks.
The geyser is leaking. The geyser is ancient and is mounted over the ugly old brown bath and now it has leaked a copper stain into the brown Seventies bath. I didn’t know our bathroom could get uglier than it already is, but it’s tipping into a point now where its ugliness is almost charming. Every time I go in there, I do mind-architecture to work out how we will improve the space in a way that is thrifty as far as money, water and electricity are concerned.
I expected to come back to a certain amount of domestic unpleasantness. The cornice and the geyser don’t bother me too much. All I asked of the tenants was to look after things I loved and could not move out: to please use coasters under their drinks; to please take special care of the heirloom bed.
The side tables are full of cup stains and one is so damaged from liquid that it has bubbled.
The bed I was conceived in stands in what used to be Ollie’s room before he moved out. It’s a beautiful piece of mid-century furniture: a sleek, coppery kiaat. It now has gouges out of the headboard and foot end because the person who rented that room decided it needed to be moved around despite the small space. Walls and cupboards were scraped in the process too.
Seeing it felt like I was being gouged. It hurt.
Taking care
Considered glamorous: travelling. Considered unglamorous: housekeeping.
And yet…
To trim the dead leaves off a plant. To dust the top of a painting and set it straight again afterwards. To remove the expired sauces and spices. To safely discard old unguents and medicines. To wipe the insides of cupboards down.
To sort, set in order, clean, sustain, make safe. To repair damage. To fold and stow what can be used later. To pass on what is in good condition but is no longer needed.
In Japanese Buddhism, according to the monk Shoukei Matsumoto, cleaning is what you must do in pursuit of spirituality. The self is not separate from the environment. Cleaning expresses our respect for the world as we find it, and our sense of wholeness and of belonging. Its relentlessness keeps the ego in check.
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
I am not sure that I tend to my home for the sake of my soul, or because I feel that life is too short for blunt knives and lidless Tupperware.
I don’t know whether I take care of my things because I have a tendency towards the fetishisation of objects, or because I value the quality of the old furniture I have always bought cheaply in pokey secondhand shops because that was what I could afford.
But after seeing the damage that was done to my things, I have been thinking about — I admit there’s an element of superiority in this thought — that maybe how you care for the things you have is about how much — or how little — you respect yourself.
‘Lest we forget’
Imagine if I’d come home and the whole thing had been bombed. Imagine the flat where I live was a pile of bricks and planks burying the passports, the photo albums, the ugly but operational brown toilet.
Imagine every book, every cup, every key, every towel, every bed, every shoe, every pen, every peg, every note, every broom, every plant, every lappie, every pot, every hat, every sentimental piece of tat — fubarred into oblivion.
A few days ago, it was reported that a United Nations-led aid consortium estimated that more than 234 000 homes had been damaged in Gaza, and 46 000 destroyed.
‘Lest we forget’ is such a shitty little ditty.
It should be bombed, that empty saying. Along with all war memorials.
‘Never again’.
My ass.
Some ‘home’ content
The Dutch House by Anne Patchett.
Lansdown Dearest by Bronwyn Davids.
The Door by Magda Szabó.
The House is British stop-motion movie about three groups of people that live in a house over time. It made a huge impression on me when I saw it last year.
From the movie comes this haunting song about home maintenance.
The poem ‘Home’ by Warsan Shire.
Do you have any books, movies, songs or podcasts about ‘home’ that made an impression on you? Let’s make a list together.
Lots of love,
K.
The poem Home had my heart in my throat. Sjoe.
I'm glad you're glad to be home, will miss your Berlin musings.
Oops, off it went! I wanted to say that I share your sensibility re domestic order and beauty - a certain respect and care given to our living spaces - not for the sake of show; it goes far deeper than that.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences while away - it has been enriching and thought-provoking. Thank you for photos and for links and thank you for sharing you!