Bold As Love

She rubs the owl pendant hanging from the front door between her fingers. A bright red door. The outside façade a welcoming sage green. The black bejewelled eyes of the tarnished brass owl stare back at her blankly. Or maybe beady, knowing. Mercurial, they tease her. This she takes as a good omen. She likes owls. She thinks back on a memory she has told no one, when, as a teenager, sneaking a menthol cigarette in her grandparents’ home, in the French window of her dusty pink bedroom that overlooked the void of night sky with only a single glowing streetlight below, the pale owl that flew at her, wings spread a metre across surely, that scared the shit out of her, left her breathless, gasping for air afterwards, before veering back into the darkness, with the stars no more than pinpricks in the black fabric of the bewitching hour. Elvis Costello still playing softly on her tape deck in the background, as if it had all been nought but a hallucination, bringing her abruptly back to normal, taking another pull on her menthol cigarette, her sanity reeling. Returning, she spots two Knysna Turacos in a nearby milkwood. Another good omen. Their plumage a vibrant green. Bright red wing tipped, like the door, but velveteen. Their proud crests. Whenever she spots them in the wild, she is always surprised that they seem bigger than she last imagined. The older she grows, the closer she nears to thirty, the more she has come to quietly worship fowls of flight. Yes, this place will do nicely to build a life anew. Post break-up. The price was right when it came to the monthly rental and deposit, and it was the only place she could afford that allowed pets. She would never abandon her cat to another. A stray that, more than anything or anyone in her youngish but steadily maturing life, has taught her the true meaning of loyalty. Of love. They belong to each other. And here, surrounded by so much natural innocence, they shall thrive, both her and the cat, she is convinced. Inside, the walls are a sandy brown. The built in cupboards baby poo. She envisages them, in her mind’s eye, painted in a myriad of shades and hues of green. Green, green, green. She takes note of the big clock on the wall, faux country style with Roman numerals, all alone amidst the emptiness. She likes clocks. All timepieces really. Watches and clocks. They reveal so much of a person. Speak volumes of a space. This keepsake of the tenants that came before. Obviously not treasured enough to take it with them. But she will prize it. In this home. A final good omen. The cottage itself is small but comfortable with all the basic amenities. Not that she needs much. And at least it won’t seem too bare, being so snug, with the little furniture she has left to her name. Yes, she consoles herself again, this place will do nicely.

The ward is blank. White walls. White linen. White uniforms. Punctuated only by the constant glare and buzz of fluorescent lighting. No clock to be found. All phones confiscated. Men sleep to the one side, women to the other. Before sleep comes to them, before the nurses snuff out their flame with their nightly medication, the men pace. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down the length of the ward. She buries her nose further into her book. She cannot bear such cruelty. The ceaseless pacing. She thinks on a wild cat sanctuary she visited with her ex once, where the lynx paced up and down the length of his long narrow cage. No, she cannot bear such cruelty. `

The heartbreak has been harder on her than she had at first reckoned. Life alone in this cottage in the middle of nature, lush and verdant as it is, a mild soothing balm to the soul that is weary. Soothing, sure, but no miracle cure. Where at first she had felt a feeling close to relief, now the tears stream down her face when she is alone, to her thoughts, to her feelings. She longs for the love she has lost and is thankful at least for the companionship of her cat. And for the songs of the birdlife all around. It helps that her days, and nights, are mostly busy, too busy to waste on tears. Tears arise only in the rare in-between hours. Those in-between hours when she is carefully and meticulously folding napkins, patting them down, and smearing butter into ramekins for the tables at her job, polishing cutlery, setting up for the arrival of the rest of the staff. Those in-between hours when she lays exhausted in bed. Those in-between hours when she wakes and sips on her first coffee, then two, then three. Exhausted still, from tears spilled. But when she is helping her father with his failing restaurant by day, or working at her managerial job at yet another restaurant by night, and when the customers finally begin to roll in, life keeps her too busy for tears. Busy, busy, busy. It gives her some respite. Of course, the work on her masters has fallen to the wayside. She needs to write more pages per day, her supervisor tells her. And yet her concentration when it comes to the analytical creature she used to be, now fails her. She wishes for the heartache to leave her be. At least a part of her does. But it clings. Like a desperate infant to her breast. Feeding from her. Rendering her sore and sick and tired. And by her turn, she nurtures it, at least a part of her anyway. This ache, this grief. For it is all she has left of the love she had.

He calls to her from the solitary cell, from the restraints, calling her name over and over, calling for help, calling for salvation. Crying out. She wants to tell him there is no salvation here. This is the land that time forgot. The land where God came to die. God has been snuffed out with their nightly medication just like their spirits, their fight. Pleas wasted. No blessed candles. Snuffed. She won’t tell him this. Instead she begs the nurse. Please may she go inside the locked room, to her friend restrained, and read to him from the Green Book of Fairytales. The nurse permits it, but soon calls her back. Time for bedtime. But what has become of time? Punctuated only by the constant glare and buzz of the fluorescent lighting, in this, the land that time abandoned.

There is a market every Sunday up the road from her, on a plot of outstretched lawn. A plot that is, by the week, a dog training school. On Sundays, it comes alive with vendors of all sorts. And live music. Mostly crowd pleasing, like Jack Johnson. It is the height of summer, just the right sort of weather for a market. She likes, too, to support the locals who grow and supply herbs and vegetables, rather than the larger chain stores. So soulless. And it is not far to walk. These days, she prefers to walk where she can. The sun seems brighter, and brighter, by each passing day, and driving too disorientating in the brightness. Walking suits her just fine. She surveys the market, taking it all in. She heads first to a van selling fresh oysters. She orders two. They are handsomely presented, in a neat bamboo paper boat, with a little two-pronged wooden fork. She adds a dash of green Tabasco and a squeeze of lemon juice and makes quick work of them, relishing how they smack of the ocean, these briny delights. Unadulterated. Pure. Oysters for breakfast. When her ex had always insisted spending hard earned money on good food was a waste. So what? In this, she is finally taking a stand. She feels positively decadent. Deliciously self indulgent. She browses amongst the stalls, without much catching her eye. She picks up some tomatoes, onions and a bunch of thyme from a young couple manning a stall of their garden’s fruitful produce. A jewellery stall next draws her attention. She adores bespoke jewellery. And there it is. Magpie. A large oval stone, roughly cut, a seafoam green gemstone, set in silver. Seafoam green. Her favourite colour. A nourishing colour to her. Unadulterated. Pure. Of the ocean, like the oysters. It isn’t polished smooth like the other stones on display. It’s rough like sandpaper. Raspy like a cat’s tongue. And it catches the light with an incandescent glimmering. Its light is inside out, unlike the others. The jeweller, a young blonde girl sitting behind the display table, tells her that it is a moonstone. She slips it onto her left middle finger. It is a perfect fit. This time there is no longer any boyfriend to tell her what she should and shouldn’t like. This time it is only her and herself alone to decide. With oysters for breakfast. And she has never wanted anything more than this ring. Or so it feels right then. She dishes out the cash for it, coveting it quickly, lest it be lost to a moment’s hesitation and snapped up by someone else. It reminds her of a mood ring she treasured as a child. She twists it back and forth, in the sunlight, swooning in its sparkle. And she feels stronger. Stronger than she has felt in some time. As if, for once, there is some universal thread at work in her life, beckoning her on to better things. Walking home, onions and tomatoes and thyme in hand, she continues to strengthen in resolve as if the ring might just be mystical. A holy stone. From it, she seems to draw a power, that she is a part of something so much greater. A cosmic kismet. She chides herself for such a fanciful thought. But then, yet again, it hits her like a wave. The splendour in things. The splendour in herself. And she walks, now in strides. The tarmac springy beneath her footsteps. Homeward bound. She bemoans her shoes, longing to be barefoot. Soon, soon… To the cottage she is coming to love. To a life she will learn to love in time. As her complimentary clock on a wall in the lounge tick tocks away, in distant time to her strides. Tick tock. Tick tock. In time, in time, in time.

They are disturbed from slumber early to shower. It is the only time she glimpses a dark sky from a barred window high above. They line up. Naked. The nurse she doesn’t care for barks at them, ‘Next, next!’ and ‘Hurry up!’ as they shower three at a time. The girl who does not like to be touched elbows her in the tit in the shower. ‘Get back in there!’ the nurse barks again. Pressing herself up against the shower wall to wash, lest she take another hit, she does her best to rinse the soap off herself. Before they are all marched back to the room punctuated only by the constant glare and buzz of the fluorescent lighting. She wishes there were a clock.

She sits cross-legged on a picnic blanket spread out beneath the dappled shade of a tree in her garden. She knows not the name of the tree but she is charmed by its pretty blossoms and it stands so upright and proud. And so rooted. She takes it all in from her vantage point below, the outstretched boughs of the tree, the faultless blue sky with only the occasional white wisp of a cloud, one hand stroking her dozing feline beside her. Then, suddenly, she sees it. A small green snake weaving its way amongst the higher branches. For one fleeting instant, she feels her chest tighten. As a child she’d had a recurring nightmare, of always swimming merrily in a pool of water, only to find herself surrounded by snakes, treading water, treading water, trapped. But curiosity gets the better of her. There is nothing particularly frightening about the creature. Not really. In fact, it is almost elegant even. She continues to watch it slowly make its way amongst the branches of the tree. Until, as suddenly as it appeared to her, it vanishes. She blinked, or perhaps turned to look at the purring cat, and now it is gone, lost to her sight. She sighs to herself, dismayed. She thinks back on her recurring nightmare. She’d looked up the meaning of snakes in a dream book of symbols she had found in the library years later, and it claimed that such dreams were sexual in nature. But she was so very young. The pool of water ever present in her nightmares needed no explaining. From the age of three she’d been an incurable water baby, and be it a swimming pool or by the sea, her mother could never get her out of their depths. She dreamt of flying too when she was young. She would launch herself off of her grandparents’ French polished dining room table and fly, feeling weightless as in water. Another dream from her childhood comes to her, while she gazes upwards, half-heartedly looking for the small green snake, still stroking the cat. In the dream she opens a door, on to a diving board, and a large swimming pool contained within four nearly endless walls. It is a long dive down to the water. But this doesn’t concern her. She dives. Cartoon fish swim all around her, and they warn her that her mother is in danger. That she must save her from a terrible beast. Quickly she tries to climb the ladder railings back to the diving board, back to the open door, but once there, the other side of the door reveals a long corridor and she is too late, a monster with fangs carrying the limp corpse of her mother dripping with blood, dripping, dripping, towards her. Then she wakes. Stealthily, she climbs into her mother’s bed. She knows she is well past the age for such things. Recollecting now, she feels sorry for the child she was, so sensitive, so very afflicted by such horrors of the imagination. The small green snake remains hidden from sight. The sun is high in the sky and she decides to retire indoors, calling the cat after her andshaking off the picnic blanket before she folds it. She cracks open a cold beer from the fridge. Yes, she was a strange child. With so many imaginary friends. Real friends, other children, she had found could be too unkind. She cared more for the snails in their garden and her trusty poodle than she did for the children at her school. Mean they could be. She remembers too, birthday parties where she would tire of the other children and lock herself away in their pantry, instructing her mother to rid the house of the lot of them. And for the most part, her mother had indulged her. She muses on this as she takes another swig of her beer. She belches. She downs the beer and cracks open a second. It’s her day off after all. Day by day, she is growing less tearful, more resolute. Unconsciously, she fingers the moonstone ring and twirls it around and around. Her thoughts return to the snake in the tree. Momentary shock aside, she’d felt an overwhelming fondness for it. Like it belongs. In the same way that she and the cat belong here. And the clock that belongs, the clock that was there before them all continues to tick away, its ticking hand soon muffled as she slots Bold as Love: The Axis by Jimi Hendrix into her grandparents’ old stereo system. Unheard, the clock ticks all the same, keeping time. ‘Well I’m bold, bold as love… Just ask the axis…’

She revolts. She refuses to eat anything other than ripened fruit. Not this grey meal with sweet tea served up three times a day. If only she can eat of the fruit of the tree sweetened by the sun, fallen to the earth for eating, maybe then, its golden rays will soak in, by proxy. How she misses the sun. How she misses her cat. How she misses the birdsong. How she misses the ticking of the clock. There is nought here, but the constant glare and buzz of the fluorescent lighting.

She is coming to know the lay of the land. The wildflowers that have sprung up, yellow and purple. Wild garlic for cooking. Another a salve for an itchy bite. She has read that bees are most attracted to yellow and purple flowers and she marvels on the wonder of nature as the yellow dandelions begin to flower all over, at the ready. Their name meaning ‘tooth of the lion’. She has recently looked it up. Known for their bed-wetting properties if drunk in a brew. She knows the creatures too. In her cottage, she has one gecko behind the geyser. And another behind the clock. Until nightfall when the hunt begins. She knows too the lone bumblebee that rests within a hole in the wooden slat of her crooked fence. She has learnt too that they are industrious pollinators, carrying a far greater load than the better known honey bee. Taking pity on the ants in her home she has begun to leave them little scraps from the table, on the kitchen sink, just for them, rather than shun them, kill them. And she has never felt more alive and more in perfect pitch, positively humming, with the greater harmony of all living things. She feels a kinship to them that is close and intimate. Soulmates. There is even a moth that visits her when the sun has retired, and the moon hangs heavy. Each and every night, the moth comes calling, while she sits by candlelight. She plays music for the moth. ‘One Day’ by Matisyahu streaming on Youtube plays on a given night. She is spellbound as she watches its little antlers move furiously back and forth in time to the music. Antennae really, but she prefers to call them antlers. It seems nobler. More fitting. More deserving. She does not name any of the creatures. They are not hers to name. They are simply the Beloveds. Watching the moth dance, she remembers a paper she once came across in her honours year, while researching for an essay on The Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. She was visiting a friend at the time, for a writing sabbatical, a friend who was busy with his masters in psychology. Both of them animals of the highest reason back then. Usually they left each other while working, but this factoid was far too precious to wait for later. ‘Hey, Ross,’ she called to him. ‘Get a load of this.’ She read from the paper, ‘Research suggests certain moths are drawn to Belladonna for the plant’s hallucinogenic properties.’ He chuckles. She chuckles. Moths get high…? It comes back to her. She’d forgotten all about that day until now. ‘Why,’ she wonders aloud, ‘would anyone want to bother with space, all the way out there, when there is so much right in our backyard? Eh, moth?’ And by day, when she has time off, her masters relegated to the absolute margins, uncaring, she wanders around her little piece of land, collecting broken bits of china and sea shell and sanded pieces of coloured glass to build a small cemetery where she lays fallen creatures to rest. Mostly geckos that her cat has tortured into an early grave. Anyway, that’s life. With time, she comes to think of herself as a buddhist, whatever she thinks that means. First do no harm, perhaps. Second, love boldly. Who can really say? All the same, she has begun to live by a certain creed of her own making. To be in blessed union with each and every creature, no matter how small, no matter if they are considered pestilence. To celebrate all in the garden, be it a herb she uses daily or a weed that serves its own divine purpose. This is her home, where she will do as she pleases. A kitchen overrun. Ants and all. A garden of its own making, wild and unfettered. Her working days are becoming increasingly frantic, her father’s business near ruins, then rushing to her paying job where the restaurant is always fully booked, even turning tables. And yet, she returns home, to the place she loves most, amongst her kin, to find she has all the vigour in the world to wait up and watch the sunrise on a new day, to watch nature in all its magnificent guises unfold, this technicoloured tapestry… From the geckos that retire by daylight, to the daisies beneath the proud tree that gratefully unfurl at the first sign of sunshine. She loves too, those unspoken hours, from midnight, until the birds are roused to song, as a dim mauve light begins to encroach. Colours have never been so vivid. Song never so stirring. The sky never so endlessly expansive and all encompassing. The moon. The stars. The sun. Her heart has never felt so full, so overjoyed, so perfectly attuned to the sheer magnitude of it all. Surely, surely, she grows ever certain, there must be a universal source for it all, for all of this, all living things so unspoiled in design. Designed just so. A higher wellspring from which all of this has flowed forth… Her mind boggles to think, but her gut tells her to believe. Or is it her soul? Believe, for it is so. And she has never believed more fervently. How else can it be? She reasons with herself, but logic fails her. Maybe her soul knows best, she counters, in the wee dark hours of the morning, before the bird song comes to enflame her from such bargaining. The bird song only confirms what she longs to be true. And so it is. While the clock that has been there the longer keeps ticking away. In time, in time, in time. ‘…Just ask the axis…’

The psychologist asks her if she knows what day it is. She erupts, laughing. Maniacally. She shouldn’t. It is clear from his face that this is not the reaction he wants. But she thinks him mad. She is locked in the land that time forgot, that God forsook, with no windows, no clock to speak of, but only the constant glare and buzz of the fluorescent lighting, and this man, in all seriousness, wants her to name the day of the week. Is this some bizarre test of her state of mind? For all she knows, it’s been a day or a lifetime. She laughs still. Unable to stop. No doubt this will cost her, but she cares not anymore. He asks her more questions. No, she is not suicidal. No, she does not hear voices. But she thinks to herself, I shall never ever tell you of my cottage beloved by the universe, by God, and filled with Beloveds, of my wildling heart amongst all other wildlings. That is my secret to keep. And again, she laughs. And she laughs. And she laughs.

She cannot recall a day warmer than this. She runs her frock under a tap of cold water, ringing it out and dressing in it, to cool her. She cracks a cold beer, relishing in the first sip. She selects some ska music from her collection and cranks it up. She dons her wide brimmed summer hat. Ruefully, there is a moment where she thinks about her ex. He’d said that with her short hair she looked like a cancer patient in a hat. ‘But we don’t care anymore, do we?’ She holds her moonstone ring out to bear it aloft, haughtily, next ruffling the fur on the crown of her cat. Beer in one hand and picnic blanket in the other, she heads for the tree, some shade, and some relief. She has learnt a new word recently for the filtered flecks of light beneath a tree. It is Japanese. Komorebi. She likes to collect words. Embodiments. It is the playful season and the baby monkeys are out, bouncing up and down on the green netting hanging over the wooden poles of the car port. She watches them and dances gleefully with them in time to the music blaring in the background. Like a scene out of The Jungle Book. But soon she grows sweaty. It is simply too hot. She retires to the blanket and the cold beer waiting for her in a chilled silver tumbler she found as a set of four at the Sunday market. She’d once been told that drinking from silver had healing properties. Whether this was true or not, she frets not now. For now, as long as it keeps her beer chilled, she is content. Her wet frock clings to her skin, shielding her in part from the heat wave. But soon it is dry again. She goes inside to top up her silver tumbler. Next she makes a turn by the bathroom, splashing her face with cold water. She returns outside, only to find that a breeze has begun to stir. The trees, the bushes, the flowers, they all seem to sway in the breeze in time to the ska music playing out on her stereo. In jest, she acts conductor, swaying her arms, gesturing with her hands. Please rain, please rain, please rain, she begs inwardly. And as if she called them into being, in the same way God uttered ‘Let there be light,’ heavy clouds begin to gather, sun shining all the while, as droplets begin to fall, cooling the earth, cooling the cheeky devils bouncing on the green mesh, cooling her right down. A monkey’s wedding. She sits there resplendent in the rain and the sunshine, not for once flinching or rushing indoors. Did she conjure the clouds? Were her prayers answered? Could you wish upon the universe as if it were a star or a coin in a fountain? And nature continues to dance to the music, the monkeys to play, when the phone begins to buzz. Endless message after the next. Concern. But she doesn’t give a fuck. Right now she is master of the fucking universe. Off goes the wifi device, off goes the phone. The ska continues to blare. But the clock that was there before stops. She must get a new battery for it, she makes a mental note, giving it a cursory glance as she grabs another beer. It is only later, when she relents and turns the wifi back on, that the clock begins to tick again. Surely, not. Surely, she imagined it. Or is the cottage, maybe, just maybe, truly at the very centre of it all, at the axis, as bold as bloody love? The cottage that could stop time. She ponders, more than a little, then takes a swig of her beer and belches. ‘Well, I’m bold…Bold as love…’

She has emerged, four months later, not so long in a land that time forgot, in a land punctuated only by the constant glare and buzz of fluorescent lighting. Or maybe not, maybe it was an eternity. All the same, here she is, released, on the farm plot of a dear friend of her mother’s. Seeking refuge. She longs to find God again, or even a loosened thread of the grand universal tapestry, in the design of things, in the miraculous splendour. How long must she suffer? Grieving. At four a.m., like clockwork, the rooster crows. She stretches and rises from sleep. She places the kettle on the gas stove. The birds break the dawn with their song. The recent litter of kittens are already pestering her cat, much to the cat’s feigned irritation. But she knows the cat will grow to care for them in time. She trusts the cat will prove maternal after all. That she will nurture them. In time. She will soon begin work on her masters, on this fine morning. It has been of some comfort. To have something to sink her teeth into, as the saying goes. It is too hot to work in the Klein Karoo in the afternoon, and her mother’s friend has told her a siesta is the order of the day. All is good. Mostly. But she longs for that fullness of her praising soul again. How long, again she wonders, will she have to wait before her supplications are answered? But it comes. Oh, it comes. As the sun begins to sink a little lower, she awakens from her siesta and leaves the cool of the cottage for the patio. The mountains, the trees, the bush, all are enshrined by a strange light in a glorious orange haze, almost amber, like she has never seen before. She will ask her mother’s friend about this strange light later, over dinner. ‘There’s a word for it. It’s called gloaming,’ her mother’s friend will tell her. She will run the word over and over, rolling it up and down her tongue like a pebble, without uttering a sound. Over and over in her mind. Over and over in the depths of her soul. Gloaming. And she will be still, be still that beating heart, and know that it is God. In the land where time moves to the course of God’s will. In roosters crowing, in sunrises and hellish afternoon heat, in shooting stars whizzing by beyond. And she will still her racing thoughts, still her bare soul. She will commune again. In gloaming. And in time, in time, in time. Everything in good time. And bold as love.

Still Life by Chrls E. Burchfield