Beyond the red carpet

I took the garbage out just now. On the corner, there is a giant old house with a walled-in garden. Sometimes there are birds singing and that was the case today. So I stood really still, tilting my head upwards, craning my neck to look past the waves of bamboo and into a new-leafed tree. “Magpie?” I wondered. But I don’t really know their calls and could see nothing so I simply stayed and listened to the melody. It was insistent. A refrain repeated over and over that could have been titled, “Joy” but for all I know that winged one was just complaining to his neighbors. I realised that the sun was touching my skin, that it was warm, that I was just fine without a coat or woollen anything. It felt good and I was lifted, me, just there, in the middle of the street.

The wind has been busy and the rain overfloweth to the point that the Rhône threatened to come into town. The fête foraine, or amusement park, set up just on the other side of the rampart wall from where I live, decided to leave early because of it, much to my relief. I prefer birdsong to adolescent screams, no matter how filled with wonder they might be. My box of an apartment is quiet again while the world is breaking into being outside, over and over and over. What difference this is from the covid lockdowns where silence was everywhere and a warning. One that left its imprint on me. I am different now than I was before in more ways than I can count, fingers and toes included. 

Yesterday, I finally rolled out the red antique carpet that my ex had dropped off a few years ago; practically the last that I have heard from him. It’s funny how fifteen years can be so easily swept underneath. He left me the carpet and a coffee table from Rajasthan, perhaps because they reminded him of me, of the life we had together, for that was where we ate for the first three years of living together. The rug is heavy and worn. I dragged it into place and was not prepared for the scent of my dogs that arose, both now deceased, their golden hair still stuck in places along with a dried up cockroach who had come along for the ride. I told myself that it was ok to cry if I wanted to, but I couldn’t. My tears would have been like the river and swept me off to sea. I got out the vacuum and opened the transom above the door instead, uncertain as always.

My current companions apartment down the way is tiny but it has a tub to sink in, plus views to wish upon and a small yard. In French we would call it un jardin, a garden, although nothing is really cultivated in it beyond new memories. I have just gotten back from some time there, time suspended as in parentheses, as if the world was on hold again. The last evening, my sweetheart encouraged me to get out and go for a walk. I grabbed my phone to have a camera that would make me look at the light. The light and growing things, things that are new. This person stepping gently so as not to crush the weeds and wildflowers was me but she was who? I don’t really know or at least am not as certain as I once was. So very, very much has happened I must be not the same, but different, musn’t I? 

I am not sure if I will keep the carpet. If I can just make it only memories about my sweet pups Ben and Kipling and not the representative weight of an elegant past, then maybe. I can admire the deep ruby color, like the wine I no longer drink and walk upon it barefoot, imprinting anew. For here or in my boyfriends garden, there is love as well. That word stops everything in its tracks, doesn’t it? Things may well get worse before they get better on our planet blue but happily, luckily, that one word is still here – never the same but different – and it sings like the Magpie, true.