This morning, three memories of blue appear through the window of my mind. I ponder each as a painting in a museum:
The Blue Room, Mombasa, after long bus rides from Nairobi, a crisp, golden sambusa stuffed with spiced green peas and potatoes, dipped in tangy coconut chutney, with a dash of lime. I always knew the way from the station to Haile Selassie Road; took a seat the by the large windows where the sunlight streaming through made my sambusa look like a religious event.
The Blue House, Coyoacán, a pilgrimage of sorts for melancholic wanderers in search of maps to a love supreme. Frida Kahlo, patron saint of sad girls who grow up to be women who perfect the art of longing and desire. I must have been there, I remember small fragments, like the medicine cabinet, the back brace, speckled paint brushes, the grace of that lush green courtyard garden, cobalt blue interference with grief. I wrote home about it, I’m sure, but it feels like a dream.
The Blue City, Chefchaouen, where I rambled in a maze of alleyways covered in the color of the skies and heaven. Blue stairs, blue doors, blue windows, blue ledges. Up in the Rif mountains, a fairytale village, a plaza that opened wide and cobbled, a cafe in its center, blue plastic tables and chairs set out for hot amber tea with white sugar cubes neatly stacked in small painted ceramic bowls. My sister and I sat with a young man with dark brown eyes and rosy cheeks, smiling high on hashish, sipping his tea while he slowly stroked his pet iguana. We were in love.
I’m listening to conversations about memory, how it’s an act of embroidery, more stitch than retrieval. And when we go to fetch one, we construct it anew each time, gathering different materials to prop it up, keep it steady. Every memory, a wobbly wave of impulse and sensation that gets gathered up in the container of our words as bricks that build a tower, and up we climb to the top to say see, look at me and what I made of this life!
“Some people come from so far away, they never arrive.”
What exists inside the night where you belong? Here, I barely hear a peep in the dark. In Zanzibar, it was all cows snoring, bush babies wailing, mosquitoes buzzing, bottles breaking, doors slamming shut, vendors’ clanking their wares, motorcycle engines roaring, stars screaming their illuminated beauty into the black sky.
“Maybe when reality shifted shape, a writer should let it shift,” write Kiran Desai in “The Loneliness of Sonny & Sunny.” I finished it today. I am mourning the end of such magnificence. I walk away from this book with a willingness to let reality shift as I stitch what still asks to be remembered. I have always tried to remain loyal to the truth, pledging allegiance to quotes and documents. But sometimes what comes marching through my mind is just a verse in the curse in technicolor.
The last time my ex lit up with rage and threw the keys into the bush and screamed at me and nearly veered us off the road and barked at me like a rabid dog—which last time, there were many, see? I’m stitching—I was offered refuge in the spare room of a friend who lived nearby. The walls were painted a crisp white like an asylum, with just a single clear glass of water by the bedside table and a simple overhead light. It was my first peaceful sleep in weeks.
In the morning, I heard two monkeys sitting on the balcony ledge talking to each other. When I slid the door open and stepped out to greet the morning, they barely looked at me or registered the pain I’d endured the night before. I clocked their nonchalance.
I spent a lot of time in my 30s alone on sandy shores with roving cows. One thing has nothing to do with another, but I am grateful for my mind’s willingness to remember every kind, glassy eye.
The Blue Room, Mombasa, after long bus rides from Nairobi, a crisp, golden sambusa stuffed with spiced green peas and potatoes, dipped in tangy coconut chutney, with a dash of lime. I always knew the way from the station to Haile Selassie Road; took a seat the by the large windows where the sunlight streaming through made my sambusa look like a religious event.
The Blue House, Coyoacán, a pilgrimage of sorts for melancholic wanderers in search of maps to a love supreme. Frida Kahlo, patron saint of sad girls who grow up to be women who perfect the art of longing and desire. I must have been there, I remember small fragments, like the medicine cabinet, the back brace, speckled paint brushes, the grace of that lush green courtyard garden, cobalt blue interference with grief. I wrote home about it, I’m sure, but it feels like a dream.
The Blue City, Chefchaouen, where I rambled in a maze of alleyways covered in the color of the skies and heaven. Blue stairs, blue doors, blue windows, blue ledges. Up in the Rif mountains, a fairytale village, a plaza that opened wide and cobbled, a cafe in its center, blue plastic tables and chairs set out for hot amber tea with white sugar cubes neatly stacked in small painted ceramic bowls. My sister and I sat with a young man with dark brown eyes and rosy cheeks, smiling high on hashish, sipping his tea while he slowly stroked his pet iguana. We were in love.
I’m listening to conversations about memory, how it’s an act of embroidery, more stitch than retrieval. And when we go to fetch one, we construct it anew each time, gathering different materials to prop it up, keep it steady. Every memory, a wobbly wave of impulse and sensation that gets gathered up in the container of our words as bricks that build a tower, and up we climb to the top to say see, look at me and what I made of this life!
“Some people come from so far away, they never arrive.”
What exists inside the night where you belong? Here, I barely hear a peep in the dark. In Zanzibar, it was all cows snoring, bush babies wailing, mosquitoes buzzing, bottles breaking, doors slamming shut, vendors’ clanking their wares, motorcycle engines roaring, stars screaming their illuminated beauty into the black sky.
“Maybe when reality shifted shape, a writer should let it shift,” write Kiran Desai in “The Loneliness of Sonny & Sunny.” I finished it today. I am mourning the end of such magnificence. I walk away from this book with a willingness to let reality shift as I stitch what still asks to be remembered. I have always tried to remain loyal to the truth, pledging allegiance to quotes and documents. But sometimes what comes marching through my mind is just a verse in the curse in technicolor.
The last time my ex lit up with rage and threw the keys into the bush and screamed at me and nearly veered us off the road and barked at me like a rabid dog—which last time, there were many, see? I’m stitching—I was offered refuge in the spare room of a friend who lived nearby. The walls were painted a crisp white like an asylum, with just a single clear glass of water by the bedside table and a simple overhead light. It was my first peaceful sleep in weeks.
In the morning, I heard two monkeys sitting on the balcony ledge talking to each other. When I slid the door open and stepped out to greet the morning, they barely looked at me or registered the pain I’d endured the night before. I clocked their nonchalance.
I spent a lot of time in my 30s alone on sandy shores with roving cows. One thing has nothing to do with another, but I am grateful for my mind’s willingness to remember every kind, glassy eye.
