By: Zofia
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Pink September

August – September Update

I’ve spread a teatowel over the counter in order to bring my laptop close. The sounds of the kitchen embrace me: the soft burr of the timer, the hiss and sigh of the pot on the stove. Outdoors night is falling, the window to my right dark and green, grey sky over my shoulder tinged with the very faintest hint of gold. In the distance, cars approach and disappear with a long gentle breath in and out. The metal keys are smooth and warm beneath my fingers, and my fingers dance, darting here and there in a manner utterly incomprehensible to my thinking brain, amazed by the words appearing before me on the page. Now I feel a draft cold around my bare feet, a layer of condensation has built up on the window. I pause to stir, steam wafts and wets my face, clouds heavy in the air. Asterix lies eyes forelorn a few feet away, keeping up a slow melodic whimper. He wants my love, or his dinner.

I’m making French Onion soup. It takes three or four hours from start to finish, so that if I want to get anything else done I have to carefully plan around it. In truth I love it for the attention it demands. There is something so liberating to me in the act of cooking. The beauty of the colours, the miracle of the tiniest things: the way the layers of the onion hug each other so tightly, the glitter in the salt of a stock cube, the cold drops of water that out of nowhere suddenly coat the half empty bottle green of the Pinot Gris, windows into deep wells of copper and gold. There is a magic to it, I’m sure, but perhaps you only know if you know. I love cooking for its physicality, for the way it fills my hands and senses, frees my mind to wander. Over the past couple of hours I have been transported back to the world of the late nineties, engrossed in the story of Nuala O’Faolain, the context of the Ireland she experienced as a woman (“Do You Believe in The Devil?” – please watch), the joy of hearing people talk who love reading as much as I do, the ineffability of a woman reflecting on her life and imminent death. I love cooking for this also, its acceptable solidtude, the space it gives me to simply be and think. And with onion soup: the permission to cry.

It’s been a while since I last wrote. June July was a difficult time for me, more difficult in some ways looking back than I was able to appreciate from within. I lost someone I loved, and with that something deep inside me shifted. It was one of those moments where you realise that you will never again be able to see and experience life as the person you were before. I don’t know now how it was that I carried on, but sometimes I think doing so is a way of tempering and moderating the emotional response, releasing it in tiny bursts to make it bearable, so that it doesn’t overwhelm you all at once. With August came a new job, space to pause and recollect. And suddenly I couldn’t write any more. Now here I am, emerging into a pink September.

Auckland is currently in lockdown again, even as much of the rest of the world appears to be opening up. My friends tease me about it: I heard the whole country is in lockdown again because you found one positive case! – but the reality here is different, NZ is fighting a different battle than anywhere else. There have been a lot more cases in hospital recently with this outbreak, and every time they are transported within the hospital they are encircled by a PPE-wearing vanguard enforcing a 2m distance – it feels surreal every time, I can’t think that there is anywhere else in the world where this can possibly be happening. Numbers are falling again though, and the vaccine continues to roll out. Sometimes when I pause to think about it, the immensity of it all staggers me, I feel it heavy on my chest, oppressed so hard I can barely breathe. Then work and life rise up around me again, a chatter of colour and distraction. Maybe it’s the only way.

On a personal front, lockdown weekends have been so sweet. I struggled mentally with some of the previous lockdowns, but this time round I was better equiped (- more books!), my energy levels more suited to laying low. Early nights and slow mornings, lots of cooking, love and self-care. Meanwhile the days are lengthening, warmer, more colourful. Many of the magnolias are now green-leaved, the cherry trees on our street have blossomed and been stripped naked by Spring storms, but there are huge clumps of clover in the parks, the daisies in my neighbours’ yards are fresh and plump, and the leaves of the tall striking toons are impossibly pink against blue skies. This is Auckland as I first knew her, the Auckland of four seasons in a day, warm and spring-scented, gentle and sofly sunlit in the morning, sharp crystal light spliting skies into rainbows, tangles of flowers bubbling out of every crack and crevice, cool stormy and water-logged by night.

After I surfaced from those initial numb weeks of loss, I have been trying very deliberately to make more space for conversations with people I care for, time spent on things that bring me joy. I signed up for a month-long writing workshop and oh! the experience of writing to a deadline again, being up against it: it takes me back to my undergaduate days, sends adrenaline coursing through me in that way that makes you feel so alive. I’ve read close to thirty essays or excerpts from writers all foreign to me, published across areas of the internet I had never before explored, opening up a whole map of unknown territory, writing that excites me, makes me feel the way I felt as a seventeen year old arriving at university and discovering how much more there was to the world than I could have ever imagined. Every week there are notes on craft, every week I read something in a style completely new and strange to me, something that marks and moves me. I am learning so much and I am loving the process, and the best thing of all is that it has been such a private happiness, something I’ve been able to immerse myself in before and after work, something I have been able to let my mind escape to in the shower or while washing up, the sense of discovery and challenge so great that it has really allowed me to leave behind whatever happened during the day, to lose myself in something new. It has made me feel more me too, whatever that elusive concept might mean.

It’s getting cold here now, time to wrap up and wind down. Sending love out across the ocean to all my overseas friends who still read here – I miss you all, even and especially if we haven’t spoken in a while, it means a lot to me that you still drop by, and I’m sorry if you’ve messaged me in recent times and I’ve left you unanswered. I plan on being regular here again, always as life allows, so many books and walks I want to share with you all, so many thoughts and wonders. Leaving you now with the joy of Spring, until the next time –

– Zx

ps. for those who like these kind of games – did you spot the butterfly?