.Something like a mama

Today was a good post day. Apart from the Amazon envelope (containing ‘Memories of a color’, the debut album by Stina Nordenstam, of whom we’ll talk about someday soon), the postman delivered, crustily, a heavy parcel from Greece. On it there is a postal code that contains me. My mother sent it from Oropos. Again, like every month. Sometimes, twice a month.

I wore a smile and sank into it: small jars of tahini with honey clothed in kitchen paper, for fear they might break, Greek newspapers and magazines, a 4-piece sheet set (I told her not to send it!), chocolates, ‘The Man who fell to Earth’ (and I forgot in Greece and desperately wanted him to revisit me in Milton Keynes), more chocolates, a Korres’ shampoo with aloe and soapwort (which is supposed to cleanse me gently),a knitted scarf…

But this time, as I reached the bottom of the box, I also unearthed her face. Perhaps because I bow to its necessity lately. Or maybe because I could vividly visualize her glassy stare as she was schematizing this boxed wonderland. There is a whole world (half-real/half-imaginary) in here. With waves kissing its shores; and weightless, clear and almost transparent clouds. The flying cities of Moebius and Magritte, Italo Calvino’s Le Città Invisibili, the Ocean Cities of Tokyo and Plato’s Politeia. A place where tears (in case they fall) become night blooming lilies, two suns (too many able fires), His eyes, trees - and like the falling man, I’m trying to hang on to some dust, some grass and this point of Motionless Time where everything reconciles again. This land remembers me, resembles me, pertains to me and made me. And one day my eyes will be underneath her ground.

Now this world is marked on the top right hand corner of a box. I, on the bottom right. But it feels like I’m balancing on the gulf in between. I put my arms around it and carried it to my room. And as I walked in, she was there. Waiting to take care of my wounds. Just like when I was a frolicsome child that had cuts on my knees from falling down.

I still fall, Mother.