Let the bubble slowly gain momentum
As balloons pop gold confetti
This right here's Moments in Movement
- Macromantics
What are we still doing in the city?
And the child sleeps.
What are we still dragging our feet, lugging, slogging...how big is this whole that we're digging? they ask.
And the child sleeps on his mother's chest, sprawled and stuck. Lullabyed by the wheels on the bus going round and round. It's a cold and frosty morning, but he sleeps.
As the father, mother and baby roll along, alseep but not resting, their tired minds wonder: how much more city can we take? Their nostrils full of dust, their hair smoky, ears unable to tune down the white/blakc/mixed noise. They are weary from the weight of their bags and they wonder: where is the Nature?
As they roll along they dream of what has passed. The mother remembers sitting in Eric and Londi's student garden, drinking rooibos from a tin cup. 'It's not rooibos till you've had it in South Africa' sings Londi, all eyes and dreads and lifeforce. The baby sucks on a rusk -- the other South African staple.
The father is embroiled in an action dream. He is in an unfamiliar city. (Is Montevideo familiar to many outside its own borders?). It's late, and the encroaching darkness pushes him to find shelter for his family. 'But we made a reservation!' 'No señor, disculpe. No esta nada a qui.' He covertly fondles his credit card in his pocket; the urban man's weapon of choice. He wonders how far he will go with using it tonight...Back in the mother's dream the scene shifts to a hot Cape Town afternoon. It is seriously hot. It's Christmas Eve day and The Mountain shows no sign of bringing wet and cooling relief. Mother, father and baby are out on their arse, looking for shelter. This stresses them all, each in his or her own way. They eat a kebab from a disenchanted Turkish-German who fell in love with Cape Town and returned to build a life. 'This city seduces you at first glance. It's magic. But living here is a different story.'
Then in a swirl of Beatle-esque psychodelia it starts to shift and happen.
The mother, exhausted and nervous, runs down Long street, clutching the list of useless hotel numbers, all dead-ends, all rooms full. She speeds into the Mexican cantina where the father and baby are relaxing with milkshakes and nachos. And when the soft, melancholy owner reaches out to ask how the househunt is going she bursts into tears of exasperation. He calls his contacts. Nothing. They go back to the phone and try others. Occuppied. She dials more hotels and out of the corner of her eye notices that the baby is unravelling an African wire sculpture of a Christmas tree. And somebody is taking a video of him. She sits down on the floor just for a moment, relishing the cool and dark and quiet. From this low vantage point she observes a Spanish girl in a yellow headscarf, talking rapidly about the 'Namibia Project'. The father is explaining their situation to a Zimbabwean wire sculpture artist and in a split-second decision they get up, walk out of the artist¡s studio and are back on Long Street, the man filming them from the depths of the room, holding his tiny digital camera steady as they vanish through the doorway.
Later they will learn that man's name (Coco); of his love for his little camera (Austrian graphic designer and wiz-bang artistic kid); his relationship with the Spanish girl (a deep, childlike, protective love); and his relationship to them (we are all Jews, we have all run from Odessa or Vienna, we have all known an old lady Lola and as we squeeze each other's hands tight, tight with the electricity of finding soul siblings, our big, dark Semitic eyes so at home with sadness weep their heart-stomping Gypsy lovesong).
Later, they will find a place to stay; far from ideal, but ok. They will dump their bags, walk back down Long Street, and the mother, hearing a distant choir singing Gospel will say 'let's follow that sound'. They will end up in the palm heart of the Company's Gardens, unexpectedly pulled into a pavillion with families, fruit and biscuits, Xosa kids warming up for a marimba concert. They will receive a call from Eric and Londi, inviting them to dineer with some gown-ups and the bizarrely! wonderfully! just-who-the-hell-are-we?! be treated to an elegant supper in one of Cape Town's top restaraunts, ogling the art nouveau detail in this converted Victorian bank while nibbling on langoustines and slowly sipping gazpacho with a raw salmon rosette and avocado icecream.
They will fall into a heap on the bed in their hotel, and declare that this shall forever be known as the day of four dinners: kabab, nachos, fruit in the gardens and langouste in the bank. They will be fatigued beyond belief. They will be happy.
And when they wake up they will travel though the rest of their time in Cape Town, constantly realising that a city is a city is a city, but not this city. This city seduces you then becomes your mother.
They will find evidence of angelic activity sequestered in the woodwork. Frangiapani trees standing guard, bottles of water offered when the baby is thirsty on a long train trip, invitations to Shabbat dinner by newlyweds who are so conscious of their footprint they have become Kosher vegetarian gourmandes. Elderly men with coffee and croissants materialising when the family is lost and exasparated, Brazilian air traffic controllers who happen to speak a little English turning up to rescue them and find them somewhere to sleep, yet again...
And so the father reviews his options: just find another room in another part of the city, pay too much for the damn thing and get out of here. Or stay at Hotel Nightmare Montevideo and fight for the room the've reserved.
And the Brazilian man taps him on the shoulder and says 'I speak a little English. Let me help you.' And he taps again. And he tap, tap, taps them all on the crown of the head, waking them to their new chapter.
And so we wake -- mother, father and baby -- stretching our limbs and looking around. And we realise, that while we slept, Table Mountain slipped under its invisibility cloak, time zones squeezed past, hemispheres almost shifted. And that it all really happened.
That the Nature of a city may not be green -- it is usually grey, splotched with screensaver silver. The sounds are not the Gaian call of the will once imagined. The pace of the subway subservients is certainly not 'natural'. But here's the thing: nature is the actions and intentions of the humans, who carry the vital force of the ethereal into the cogs of the mechanical.
And as Nature does, it just keeps happening. In the fingers and the wires and the sculpted Christmas trees. In the spiral of the city is the realisation that This is Not What It's Supposed to Be. But that's just it -- a city is a city. And for the time being, it has a good, strong, healthy heart. And with little regard for how things are supposed to be, it just keeps happening.
