Falling

 

What do I feel?

Yes, what do I feel? What do I feel?

I feel my heels lift, my toes tighten. Whoa! Everything screams, No no no no!

Yes, I say.

There’s an upsurge of everything in my body that I hold dear; heart, lungs, blood, brain. My ribcage is a cage around my skull. What else? Thoughts. The things that go on inside me that don’t have a name. My soul, if you like.

Then air.

I am let go, finally, falling. I thought it would be faster than this, and yet there’s a little gap of time in which everything catches up. Perhaps I’m being pushed back, infinitesimally, by the force of a million exhalations far below, keeping me buoyant, floating like a cloud.

Of course it can’t last. Thoughts whoosh – they really do that - through me in a quite unnerving way, as if this, this falling, wasn’t unnerving enough.

I see him, quite clearly, like he’s there beside me keeping pace with my freefall; my father in his 1970s days; safari suit, cigarette, dark hair long and side-burned. Waving goodbye from the car window, smiling then saying something that I couldn’t hear because I was inside, behind glass and he was outside. He would have known that, so maybe it wasn’t important, but I would have liked to hear it anyway.

I see my first lover; the one I didn’t think mattered that much, so I’m surprised she’s turned up. What was it she said? You’ll regret this, you bastard. And perhaps I do now, adding it to the long list of other things to regret: the Glastonbury I didn’t go to that was the best ever; the two years wasted at the wrong university, the wife I’d had once, the job I was offered in Japan that I didn’t take, because I...well, because I couldn’t be bothered. And I regret my dad of course. What did he say to me, that last time?

It’s not all regrets, of course. But I’ve left it too late for anything else. Should have thought of this earlier, shouldn’t I? Before the falling.

There’s only enough time left to land, in one way or another.

Yellow

Excerpts from The Colourist

Here, wedged in between yellow and green, lies a vast array of hidden colours waiting to be discovered, but with so few words available to describe them. Even fruit, usually generous with its naming does not have enough variations to adequately categorise this part of the spectrum. Yellowgreen, such a young colour. It’s the bud of a daffodil, softly yielding if you press it, yet firm with nascent life. If you could peek inside, just before it opened, and smell all those flowery juices, raw and acidic, they would be the colour of spring and possibility. But it’s a sickly colour as well, bringing to mind infection and nausea, and perhaps no one has ever liked it well enough to find a suitable name.

There was a cramped corner of Marrakech made irresistible by particular colour that hung from the rafters of the market house to dry – yellow; like the pollen as it gathers on a bee's legs. It made me madly, light-headedly happy as it sang its bright song and whirled away into the dark corners of the old city, reaching out to touch the faces of the woman through their veils, smoothing the lines in the old people's brows, playing with the children and twisting around their legs like cats, making them laugh and jump about. How I loved it… though, just as it’s said that pleasure comes with pain, the beauty of this yellow made all the colours in the vicinity jostle for space and I had to focus my vision otherwise it became tainted. Such is its demanding nature, casting spells that dizzy the senses.

 

In Morocco, I learnt that when the sufis put on their rags and forgo the material world for the spiritual one, they undergo a 'green death', full of the positive connotations of that most sublime colour and a gentle forerunner to their physical death. But I shall have a yellow death, I think, the colour of the sun and saffron, a blast of last light.

Orange

 Excerpts from The Colourist

Carefully I arranged the paper-wrapped cones of spices on the scuffed dressing table and poured some tepid water from a jug to try and remove the red stain. It was stubborn and would require more scrubbing. I had cinnamon and turmeric, paprika, rose petals and a bag of cloves. Mixed with a little water they’d make intense but transient pigments. This is how I spent every spare minute; unearthing new colours, coaxing them out of the mysterious substances from the souk. Cinnamon and the turmeric; yes, there was a honeyed orange that I hadn’t quite mastered but could see in my mind’s eye. Yesterday I’d created a quite beautiful dusty yellow, like powdered sunshine. Nutmeg gave a rich melancholic brown, paprika brought a drumroll of coral red. 

For a few blissful moments of every day, I was able to let go of the fetid room and the braying aunt and lose myself completely in their bright magic.

 I thought, as I sat on a low divan plump with cushions in the rooftop garden of Mustafa Kamut’s perfumed house, that I had never been anywhere so lovely in my life. Above my head fluttered a rectangle of orange silk, strung across four pillars that marked the edges of the roof. Narrow steps led down to the third floor, up and down which trotted an endless succession of people bringing intricately carved silver trays laden with delicacies, deftly placing each upon the round central table and removing others so that the table was always full. They poured mint tea from swan-necked copper teapots from high up, so the liquid caught the sun and became a waterfall of gold. Spiced pastries, almond biscuits and little rosewater cakes appeared, a procession of gazelles’ horns and sugar plums borne high on ornate platters; far too much for three people, and I didn’t dare eat until the men had. Two women sat in the background for a little while before disappearing in a swirl of white down the stone steps and I didn’t see them again. They were not introduced, although Xavier inclined his head toward them in a similar fashion as M Kamut had done to me.

 As the hours rolled by and the endless stream of food did not abate, I had to keep myself from slumping back on the divan and staring at the beautiful orange silk as it billowed in the breeze that had sprung up as the afternoon drew on. The light of the sun moved slowly across the canopy, intensifying the orange to white, so bright it was impossible to regard. Its penumbra radiated out and deepened to a more saturated effect near the edges. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

It’s such a jubilant dance of a colour, orange. Give it time and you’ll see how rewarding it can be. Said to stimulate appetite and activity, it lacks the aggression of red and the hard stare of yellow. It reminds me of a welcome houseguest, the sort that always brings a small gift and remembers to send a thank you card afterwards. I felt full of health and cake and happy plans as I sat there on the roof and let the inside of my mind be painted with a warm orange glow.