My good friend is now in a dark. I do not mean blown fuses in the house where he would totter in the dark. It is something else. Just an ordinary present. He received a present as an experience. Stay in a dark. He received the dark for a week. To be able to leave everything, be himself, rely on his own touch, feel, taste, hearing and vision, while he would see and not see at the same time.
It is tricky with presents. I know a woman who received a parachute jump as a present. I think she still did not jump. But who knows? Maybe, she did. We are not in touch anymore and the present was given in a social event, long time ago.
I received a beautiful fountain-pen from friends. They know me and know that this is perfect. It reminds me now to buy an ink, violet – I am running out of it. I have received presents from Peter every year. They were occasionally imaginative, sometimes tacky, sometimes fantastic and other times I wondered how to react. Sometimes it was a flower from a petrol station and a grumpy face, like – again? As in every long time marriage.
I was uncertain when Peter gave me a photo of his yellow sleeping bag, in which he is falling asleep in a meadow. It looked like I should have received a sleep in a meadow or at least the same sleeping bag – a yellow mummy. As it was not enough that one looks as a mummy every morning.
I like to sleep in an open air, look at the stars and fall asleep. When there is beautiful, pleasant evening. I do not need to travel. I go to sleep in our garden and I am fine. Peter needed to travel. I do not like other places. I want a background close to my house. I sleep outside even if others sleep in their beds.
I never wanted to sleep in a mummy sleeping bag and I succeeded to find something much more suitable. A sleeping back that can be opened as a blanket. It bothers me not to have a freedom in a such a sleeping back and could not hug the other person. As soon as we got the other sleeping back – a blanket – the mummy was to children. Peter also understood that it is better in the blanket, at least when we are together. Alone, he can merge with the mummy as much as he wished.
Fortunately, he knew me after all these years and a sleeping back was replaced by much more pleasant present. I was forty. Peter arranged baby-sitting with my parents and we went to Italy. On our own, without children, a beautiful trip, with walks around villa Borghese, night streets, a restaurant where I ate mushrooms Portobello with a parsley and parmigiana for the first time. It was so well done. I have not eaten anything better since then.
I am thinking about my friend now. How is it going there? I know, he was happy about the present. I know, his life has changed a lot in the meantime. I know, it took a while before the right moment came. First a lot of work, a lot of worries, then there was not a free spot, then there was a spot but not the moment, so finally, he decided… and the place was full, he was as a replacement on the waiting list. He called me recently that it worked out. That he flies to Prague and will go to the dark on Saturday at seven o’clock. I rather put it in capital letters, to the DARK.
I would not go to the DARK. It needs a courage. It needs also a want. I would never choose it. I like reading, I like seeing, I like films and eyes…for them I am grateful. Even if I wear glasses. I had to change the glasses last week since my eyes have difficulty to see in a close and far distances so I have to put something special in my frame. A frame is also special for a reason that I will keep for myself. So I am saying to myself how hard it is to choose a present to make someone happy.
I have read that senses become sharper in the DARK. They say that a person sleeps much better. In our technological times with mobile phones, blue light, light smog outside, a sleeping is apparently not good anymore.
When a person is in the DARK, it goes well. Once you get used to it and touch everything. I am curious. I cannot wait to hear everything about it. When he will be back in Geneva. Unless his senses become so sharp that he would say that he does not have a reason to come back here anymore.
We had friends like this here who found out that home is home, it is good to live abroad but it is better to live at home. Who cares that a home is a place where news is full of crime stories and there is a smog in autumn and winter that you cannot see, and whatever else. I will wash a wooden bench that is close to a fireplace and when the darkness come and a fire shine, I will look forward his stories about the DARK that will gradually swallow us and there will be only stars in the sky.
I see them in Cartigny. It is such a beauty. A city is far away and I have peace in my soul. I have watched today a Crocodile Dundee two at a TV.
I saw New York, skyscrapers, cars, a buzz and so many people.
Uff, my forehead got wet. I do not want to go anywhere. I want to wake up in the morning, see horses in front of the house and hear an owl that I call Emily.
Cartigny, 9.8.2020