Moments: Fragments from London, Giverny, & Rodmell

Selected entries from my trip to Europe, July 2022.

“If you are young, the future lies upon the present, like a piece of glass, making it tremble and quiver. If you are old, the past lies upon the present, like a thick glass, making it waver, distorting it. All the same, everybody believes that the present is something, seeks out the different elements in this situation in order to compose the truth of it, the whole of it.” – Virginia Woolf, “The Moment: Summer’s Night”

In Russell Square again. The light sneaks through the trees as if the sun politely asked the square’s blanket of leaves if it could take a peek under, so that it could share in the leaves’ task of quivering in the wind. As I write this, it looks as though the light that shines on my page switches off and on. I hear the buses passing, children shrieking at the gushing water with delightful exhilaration, the fallen leaves turning from one side to the next in rapid succession, traveling from the British Museum to Woburn Place. An unplaced laugh. A pigeon’s coo. Leaves again rustling. Or footsteps behind me? Glass bottles kissing each other, violently, but briefly. Their finale, the deep echoing thud of the bottles landing at the bottom of a trash bin. Wings of birds flapping, an infant crying. A herd of leaves scratching the pavement with an uncharacteristic swiftness, as if preparing to sprint. The kick of a ball. More leaves approaching as if I, sitting on this bench, am the race’s starting line. What am I overwhelmed by? Sirens. French small talk. Is it the wind blowing the limbs of the trees, shaking these goddamn leaves to challenge the grip of their stems, sounding so much like the ocean’s tide, that makes my heart race? Or is it something I can see? The old black and speckled lamp posts. The blue ball, like an orphan, trotting along the grass, advancing through the square without any grace, trying to find a place to rest. The short grass. The tall gates. The sun – the way it looks at me through the branches, taunting my skin by turning the leaves neon and lime.  The lilac bushes swaying to the left. Periodically to the right, if I stare at them long enough. The people walking through. The people. The people. The people. The orange frames of windows and brick walls that complete the landscape’s background, those buildings that make this natural foreground so much more vibrant. The blue ball, which has now landed in stillness, alone. 

~

The dandelion dust dances about these wheat fields. Its waltz grants a soft smile to the eager stalks of corn, a polite nod to Annick’s rose garden, and a kiss on my defenseless elbow.

~

The whizzing and whirring of the countryside’s fields – sounds whose culprit remains invisible. These sounds don’t fade or soften upon the presence of a walker. They latch onto the walker, adhering to her solitude as if they’re an invited companion. But this companion does not lift the mist of wandering’s loneliness from the journey like the company of a friend who joins along the way. Nor does it cause hesitation, increasing the walker’s awareness of the unfamiliarity being encountered. No. It taunts the solitude she’s chosen with its obnoxious insistence that it must – and will – proclaim its presence without interruption. It does not waver. It does not covet a fear, like the walker, of embarrassment, or of the accusation that it displays a lack of hospitality. It annihilates, with its vibrating pitch, all possible notions and expectations that the walker has of perception. It does not make sure to avoid dramatics, to accommodate the presence of the unfamiliar, the way a walker approaches her atmosphere. She doesn't judge this. She just observes. Take note. It’s a different way of welcoming. 

~

The shifting hum of the owls’ morning song, like the tossing of a ball back and forth; a rhythm made, time kept, and then, oh look! There! It drops. We halt. We must begin again.

~

The feeling prompts me – rather – shoves me into reflection, just like the moth that flies overhead, fluttering frantically, as if playing tag with its shadow on the ceiling. A spider looms in the closest corner, his shadow not only unthreatening to him, but unnoticed. He angles himself towards the moth for the fleeting moment that the moth rests. And when the moth’s solitary game begins again, she invites the spider to play with her. The spider observes. Oh, I’ll sit this one out, thanks, and the moth accepts the company anyway, despite the rejection, with the small hope that the spider will, eventually, join her. She isn’t afraid to make this known to the spider. Her attitude vacillates from flirtatious to hesitant, her attempt to engage the spider so painfully apparent that she becomes desperation, embodied. And it’s a game to her. The danger she knows, but the consequence she downplays. Underestimates. The spider does not enjoy this show, though he works to provide an entertained demeanor. Like an occupied parent offering an approving, detached smile while her toddler demands, “look, mommy, see what I can do!” This excitement and this naivety bores the spider. It more than bores him, it fixes onto this entire moment like a rash, the seething frustration becoming unavoidable. Though he dodges the cliches, they are unavoidable. And here, just mere steps away, is another cliche for him to commit, to endure. And here, just mere steps away, he’ll complete this cliche. It aggravates him, this small space of time between frustration and action. Nothing is new. No one is new. It’s all the same.

Her wings; pinned. She’s – suddenly – too proud to wriggle on the wall. 

She flaps once. She freezes. Flaps twice. Freezes. Stares into the eyes of someone who is sick of being in this scene. She senses not anger, but hatred. It does not teeter between desire and wrath; it surpasses her entirely, as if he were staring not at her but at the whole of Sussex, the rest of the world. 

She wriggles free. 

The next morning, I see the moth frozen. Her wings, spread wide open, are hung in suspension. The sunrise eradicates what is now just a memory of her shadow, having died along with her. The spider has retired to his corner.