I wake, and it's as if I can feel the weight of the house bearing down. All those bricks, all those walls, all those rooms with so many things in them. So much stuff. Why do we need it all?
Instead of light and space and warmth there is darkness and clutter and cold, and it happened overnight, all it took was a ride in an aeroplane. Now, the sounds that had become so familiar between sleeping and waking - light footsteps on gravel, the creak of a shutter - are replaced by bin lorries and sirens. I open my eyes to a room that is dark, oppressive, no warm tendril rays feeling their way through the cracks, no mountains to marvel at after I rise and push back the shutters, only mountains of dirty washing in dark piles across the floor, whole ranges of them.
How did we live this life BH? Before Holiday, that is. I can’t remember. What were our habits? What used we to eat for breakfast before there was hot chocolate with pastries under the loggia starring out at the breathtaking view?
On this first morning we struggle to find our places now that one of us is missing, gone to work. How did this happen before? What did we do? All seems too busy, too much, too indoors. We slink off to converse with machines instead of each other, televisions, computers, dishwashers...to watch, to load, to surf, instead of to swim, to read, to eat.
I stand alone in the kitchen, cold tiles beneath my feet, sideways rain clawing the windows. There are so many jobs to do I'm inert. I close my eyes and I’m there again: warmth on skin, church bells ringing, the call of cicadas, a splash from the pool.
I leave the cheerless kitchen with its unloaded dishwasher and a lunch to be made, piles of grocery bags to be unpacked, and go upstairs to find my friend, my salvation.
Within minutes keys are clicking furiously under my fingertips: "I wake, and it's as if I can feel the weight of the house bearing down…"
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