Nicola Caroli

The Moment

I must begin in the future. interesting start, then fulfil your promise.  On Sept … a dispassionate  …will interview The present holds too many contrived motions to ward off the stillness that invites contemplation.  If I were to push aside the frivolous, it will be a free-fall through hell.  I refuse to dwell in this vacuum, as temporary as it may be.  I’m past fretting.  Nothing else to do but wait for the September 10th interview 4394.62 miles away.  At 9:30 A.M. a dispassionate American Consular will then interview a young married man who has not seen his wife in well over five months.  In fact, the couple has been together all of ten days since they got married in Queenstown New Zealand last December. I would break here  Then in the next paragraph describe how they were married in Queenstown, maybe in one paragraph since at that time they were together. That’s Queenstown, New Zealand – though he is from South Africa and I, his most unlikely wife, live in Hawaii.  He chose Queenstown as the namesake for his favorite spot in the Eastern Cape; an audacious town signaling happy beginnings.

I, on the other hand, chose New Zealand for practical reasons.  It was to help us meet closer to my home base, the closest one he could go to without a visa.  I guess when you live in Hawaii, measuring long distances is relative at best.  Cultures of time and space inform the most personal illusions of our lives – but I digress.

When Vuyani came from the Eastern Cape to visit me in the balmy December of 2006 – looking at this same ocean out of this same window – little did I detect a joint obsession for us to stay together this long.  Yes, we had already lived with each other for the better part of that year, but at my age I could just shrug it off as a fling.  In fact, I had warned him repeatedly not to get involved: “No way in hell will I get married again!” I had pled in earnest.  “And anyways, you need to think about the ruinous reputation of staying in my company while continuing to live in the most conservative neighborhood in South Africa!”  We had laughed it all off in 2006, even those overtly dirty looks we got all around; the icy receptions at hotels where suddenly there were no more rooms available. The harsh remnants of Apartheid; the harsher realities of the Xhosa tribe trying to live on their own land.  The impenetrable sorrow of a fragile country where anything at all can break with the gentlest touch of curiosity.  big political subjects - more detail, real situations, take us into this atmosphere

Time slithers mysteriously on the ruins of a past marriage, of a child growing up tap dancing her way out of this very home; weary of adult illness example which comes later and constant talk of death.  Looking out of the same window when she was barely twelve, she had put dibs on the front bedroom even before I had a chance to offer to buy the place.  “Phil can’t handle these steps so I may as well take the front bedroom!” She had referred to her father’s recently broken back and the two steps leading down to the sunken living space with wall to wall windows. The front bedroom opened wide into the living room – both with a full view of the turquoise ocean ahead. The remnants of old Hawaiian fish ponds were now the dredged waterways seemingly sweeping the low-rise houses below us towards the green mountains to our right. From our twelfth-floor vantage we had been so enthralled with these blue and red slate or cedar shingle rooftops that we didn’t even bother to look straight down or visit the gardens and pools, the whirlpools and the secluded barbecue nooks and the tropical gardens that would beckon us for years to come.  Twenty years later, to be exact, the scene remains enchanting and every new visitor brings me back to seeing it all over again for the first time. are you here with your first marriage and the child from this marriage? that’s not quite clear. good description of nature

Through the years, we could spot humpback whales cruising by in the winter months; oblivious of square time or round time; instinctively driven by the constant warmth of Pacific waves.  It seems I’m always looking out at sea – desperately in need of the unencumbered meeting of the sky with some emptiness below; of the comfort of my first home of innocents.  Not that I enjoy the salt water or even the thought of getting wet; rather it is simply a craving for visual relief. My devoted passion for any body of water, just as deep no matter where I take myself these days or how long I promise to stay.  Water is my anchor to continuity.  As well, the waning sun.  The same sun that warmed us in Engcobo and Bolotwa, up the Wild Coast, in Lesotho and Swaziland, begins to lighten the sky from this eastern-most point of O’ahu and sets behind the mountains to my right, adding a gesture of relief and respite.  I know it will always be there for me; more than I can say about my flighty companions. your relation to water is interesting, more detail or depth. Focus on water, where does it take you. Maybe the sun somewhere else.

In Port Elizabeth last winter the same sun and a similar ocean view out of a similar window offered their own delights.  Schools of dolphins greeting each other in the bay; hungry fishermen chasing carefree squids; undulating kids hanging on to the surf.  Looking out of our window, here or there, he is just happy to be.  No need to be taught the intricacies of meditation or the Eastern philosophies of living in the moment.  He just lives.  Not simply in the moment but also moment by moment.  Not always to reach a higher ground but perennially cautious to keep from sinking deeper into the mire of days past or the insidious promises of an uncertain tomorrow. I’m not sure who “he” is

He is now jogging 4394.62 miles away from home; his fate unresolved for another 70 hours, three more sunsets. He had been patient then as he is patient now.  As for me, I can’t wait to end this waiting.  Just three more cycles of the earth to his interview. good to come back to your promise from the beginning, perhaps more of that?

***

Good thing I ate the last piece of opakapaka I had bought on Sunday afternoon… it turns out that I have not wanted to eat anything else since Monday morning and so, in effect, that Sunday afternoon snack of fresh fish and purple Okinawan sweet potatoes were my last solid intake for the week. It was now Wednesday noon.  Not the recommended way to lose weight, but by now I’ve lost more than a couple of pounds which I’m sure I’ll regain as quickly I get my appetite back.  I have learned that no feeling is ever final. this is not very interesting, doesn’t do anything for the story

I’ve had a glass of juice each day; mostly watered down by lots of water, hot or cold. Amanzi a shu shu!  Hot water please!  The first and perhaps only real phrase I learned in Xhosa because I was constantly looking for hot water to drink as we moved from village to village, with Vuyani training unemployed farmers how to catch bees and place them in hives to at least produce enough honey to stave off hunger or supplement a blank diet of mealie meal and samp.  Moving from the heat of Hawaii to the Fall months of the Eastern cape, I simply could not keep warm.  I kept asking for hot water at every restaurant and kept getting dubious looks which I interpreted as their not understanding English.  I would turn to Vuyani for help and he would repeat “hot water please!” and when I finally asked him “How do you say hot water?” he would dutifully parrot “hot water.”  It took me a couple of weeks to realize that he was making a joke.  We had only just met and I didn’t expect such a forward sense of humor from him.  He seemed like such a serious young man and I was clearly old enough to be his mother.  Eventually I realized I needed to ask: “How do you say hot water in Xhosa?” at which point he smiled: “Amanzi a shu shu” and I later heard white South Africans asking for “shu shu amanzi” which was obviously the direct translation from an English language perspective. good paragraph, the exotic phrase, the confusion generated by it give me a sense of the relation-ship. More of that, rather than describing the relationship/people

***

Today, as I enter the third day of having no appetite I finally sit down to write part two of my story:  how I came to lose my appetite looking out at my favorite view out my window where I had last imagined his arms around me.  My desktop computer sits nearby.  I’ve finally settled on this vantage point after months of rearranging the furniture to find a way – any way – to entice me to work sitting straight up.  I live alone so I have no external commitment to keep the furniture in the same spot out of habit or others’ proclivities.  This, my first desktop in a decade, has been sitting idle for years because I just can’t bring myself to use it.  I was so used to carrying my laptop to bed with me.  I lived in my bed.  I was teaching online courses so it didn’t matter.  In between exchanging hundreds of messages with students I would pull out my digitizing tablet and play with digital watercolors based on my photos.  Until I decided it wasn’t good for my psyche.  The last book I had published back in the early ’80s I had composed from a lounge chair, a long cord stretching from my desktop WangWriter, and then a PC.  I had broken my own prior records for speed-writing. good to hear of the narrators profession and the habit of working in bed, somehow the paragraph needs rearranging, leaving out the little comments, describe it in such a way that I know how she feels rather than telling me

This time it wasn’t working.  Neither the massage chair nor the comfortable leather sofa.  Neither the cordless keyboard nor the MacSpeech option to allow me to offer hands-free audio-wisdom to my desktop.  Nothing seemed to work and the idle computer has been sitting here patiently waiting for the right moment.  Whoever says technology forces us to work faster & harder has not met up with my iMac. I would cut that paragraph.

I find my way to the idle office chair as I struggle to reconnect with the hopeful feelings of last Sunday night.  Even as I imagined Vuyani jogging down Auckland streets thousands of miles away I had clearly misinterpreted his passion to run into the night air.  Not so much to reduce his adrenalin levels;  not so much out of his excitement for joining me soon.  I may have touched upon his moment-by-moment attitude toward life in an envious state of needing a balance for my own conscientious need for planning ahead.  Yes, I can be so spontaneous at times to scare my colleagues and students and  anyone within earshot.  Yet, now that I’m preparing for the leisure of a retirement lifestyle, I wanted someone in my life to help me slow down.  Who better than someone whose name literally meant Be Happy? Again this paragraph needs rearranging, the best line is “I wanted someone in my life to help me slow down.” Where could that line take you? The jogging is als good in connection with it. There are generally too many “sidelines” that diffuse what you’re trying to say

l had no reason to believe that now, at the core of his being, a new revolution was spinning off, out of control.  He was jogging to clear his head.  He was jogging to clear up his brain to getting a grip on his life; to getting up his nerve to write.  What he had to say couldn’t be casually tossed into space for the analog airwaves to carry forward on a casual phone conversation of the type we had had for weeks on end.  The words, though just symbols on a screen, weighed too much to fly on their own.  In the early morning hours of Labor Day 2009, before the sun rose and hordes of happy campers went frolicking into the holiday spirit, I began to read his lengthy labor of love:

“Hi Dinalee.  I am thinking of so many things that you have done for me and Oyama especially bringing or making a significant role to unite me and her family. She will always ask about you everytime that I talk to her on the phone and I know she loves you too. I never have any doubts about you loving her too…”

Sweet Oyama.  His child, regardless of circumstance.  A baby whose mother died after a long coma a month after giving birth.  A baby who remains at the center of our lives just as she remains the only connection that a grandmother can now have with her dead daughter.  A lifeline for everyone.  A golden thread that tied us all together so early in 2006, when she was only a few months old. don’t know who you’re talking about here

I must begin anew in the future.  The present holds too many contrived emotions to ward off the stillness that invites contemplation. how about taking a real example of the future event rather than suggesting it