April, May, June : Polaroids
In transit (and the untranslatable)
“Today is yesterday and tomorrow in another place.
Nothing’s farther away, nor nearer
than you being here.” - 10, Homero Aridjis
The Tailor Bird.
I write this from an airport – my 12th international transit this year. I used to find airports overwhelming but somewhere along the way, the cumulative hours and tiny delights of these places have grown in frequency and familiarity.
Inside waiting minutes and cavernous spaces and momentary encounters, I make a nest. I carry my favourite teabags, I look for natural light, I find face cream or spray fragrance in the cosmetic shops.
In May, during a week of intense physical pain connected to chronic health issues, a friend sent me a video of a tailor bird stitching together her nest. I was moved by the delicacy and dedication of her soft body gathering scraps for her young. One by one, the twigs were gathered carefully into a cradle for her chicks. It was immensely reassuring watching her work and left me with something that I can’t yet name in my own language, so I learn from others:
Sughog – the stain left by tears – Irish
Around forty planes a day take off from Perth airport, rising from the runway in the east, passing over our garden gate towards the west. They fly low enough for us to read the airlines names printed on the underside of the plane, low enough for us to hear their mechanical churning, low enough for our son to hear both inside and outside the house.
In this airport, today, on my own but not really alone, I think of him at home with his Dad. I think of the nest we have built together; both careful and clumsy, scrappy and safe. I think about the unknowns that our future holds, but the certainty of the nest, finding and building wherever we go.
I think of our son spreading his hand as wide as a flower, palm open across his forehead, eyes skywards, and exhaling a long, tuneful sigh, Hiiiiiiiigh.
The Swamp.
Just before the winter rains, I walked past the swamp with our son in the pram. I wrote a poem ‘The Day We Needed To See God in the Swamp’ there, around six months ago. I gasped at the now dried-out belly of the riverbed. Where water had once stagnated, was now covered in woody purple-blue flowers, veined delicately like blood vessels under bruised skin.
Blood moves around our bodies at around 90 centimetres per second, travelling the course of our entire bodies in a single minute, if our hearts are healthy.
A bruise is blood in transit, stopped. Beneath the surface, damaged capillaries and vessels, pool blood that has no place to go. Our skin becomes tender, our blood becomes visible.
Pain can often have a way of revealing what is once hidden.
रक्त Rakhta –Sanskrit, blood, also the colour red.
The body eventually reabsorbs the blood from a bruise, and the mark disappears. Healing, the bruise changes colour and fades.
These bruise-flowers grow in the first rains and will be gone by the last, reabsorbed into the depths of the swamp.
I thought about the belly of the swamp as my own abdomen swelled in and out in chronic pain in the Emergency Room at hospital a few weeks ago.
I tried to remember that the sun is always moving, the colours are always changing depending on the light and the rains will come and the rains will go and the rivers will rush on and this, too, shall pass.
Azaleas.
In June, we saw peach-coloured Azaleas growing from the lower ground of volcanic mountains in Japan. It wasn’t planned that we’d see them for the few weeks that they were in bloom, it was just that our trip turned out that way. Their bright colour popped against foggy grey skies and muted forest greens.
Originating from Eastern Asia, azaleas grow best in acidic soils at altitude. Volcanic soils like the ones we were walking on are called Andisols, often enriched with minerals and often acidic depending on what kind of volcanoes are present – ideal for azaleas.
A popular Chinese story recounts a failed king’s fate. King Du Yu was exploiting his power. Anger stirred up against him and warriors tried to kill him. Just as one warrior was about to murder the king, he turned into a cuckoo, so the tale goes. This cuckoo’s song was whining and bitter— the song of a ruined king. The sharp song of this cuckoo was enough to draw blood from the flower, coloring the white azaleas red.
They look like fires instead of flowers.
Why do you blossom for me especially? -- Chinese poet, Bai Juyi on azaleas.
Now, in China and Japan, azaleas commonly symbolize a yearning to return home, the thought of missing someone you care about or a comfort for homesickness. Often, the flowers are given to someone you miss to remind them you want to see them soon.
Oikois –Greek, meaning home, also ecology.
The azaleas we saw were growing at the marshy base of the Hida mountain range, in an area that’s an ecotone. Ecotones like marshlands, mangrove forests and estuaries are areas where two different ecosystems meet. Where one landscape meets with another, a distinct ecosystem is created.
Although ecotones are areas of transition, they often hold more diversity and forms of life than a single ecosystem. I didn’t realise that life could thrive this much in these transitional terrains.
Ecotone – English, derived from ecology and -tonos meaning tension in Greek.
Orchids.
I shivered with surprise sitting under an art installation of over 13,000 orchids growing along transparent wires in Tokyo, Japan.
On entering the exhibit, the curtain lifted, and the orchids rose, and upon sitting, sensors let the curtain of orchids fall; we sat inside a cavern of flowers.
Orchids don’t need to be planted in soil to grow but have a unique type of aerial root that can trap nutrients and water from the air. These wandering roots reach out into the air, searching for moisture, but needing little to survive.
There we sat, listening to light.
This was a nest not of my own making. It was blood pumping through veins that were not my own. It was the soft belly of a bird. It was the budding floor of a swamp waiting for rain. It was a luxurious lament about brevity. It was delicate, soft, and breathtaking.
Mono no aware, 物の哀れ, Japanese, the transient beauty of fragile things.
It was us, in transit and away from home, but at home in the presence of each other.
It was colour displaced, relocated, blooming and alive.
It’s been busy over here (as you can tell ;) ) and we’re currently taking some time to be with family in the UK throughout August, so I’ve grouped a few more months together than normal for this little newsletter.
As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections.
Should I make these little polaroids into a small zine or chapbook? I’ve been hankering to print something. Other ideas welcome below!
You are most welcome, Ella Grace. Thank you for providing well-written words for me to read.
Thank you, Ella Grace, for this delicious and delicate meditation. You have such a serene and soulful way with words.