On The Impossible Beauty Of Fragility

Hyper Supermarket.

Too big Too Loud Too Much Choice Sensory Overload.

There’s something odd about choice. Choice tends to be only really useful if it is limited to a certain amount. When it gets to Abundance Level it tends to mainly confuse, my mind tells me, while I narrowly avoid being hit by a trolley, pushed by someone who has “Christmas Fatigue” written all over her face.

I smile apologetically, although I’m not sure why.

Abundance is such a pleasant and positive word, my mind thinks for me, and I think my mind thinks too much, and that is never a good thing.

“Maybe.”

My mind says.

“Maybe,” I repeat after my mind, out loud, but no one notices.

I spot a bottle of bubble soap at the side of the till. I choose a pink one with fairies and place it in my basket with my groceries.

*

I make chorizo the day after at a friend’s.

I go to his village by car, past ruins and green and where time has stood still and where time will lose itself completely eventually,  reclaimed by yet more green.

I park the car at the edge of the village and walk past the old church with its cemetery which seems more alive than the village itself.

The weather is perfectly fitting for me,  the type of soul drenching fog which won’t clear by midday.

“You find soul drenching fog mysterious.” My mind suggests. “But there is nothing mysterious about Chorizo making.”

“Maybe. ”

I like the place where we make chorizo every year. It used to feel like home, as if I had been a peasant in a previous life, there is an old bed in the corner and a window which has a view you can only see if you stand on your very tiptoes, an old shotgun hanging from the beams. My friend told me a few years ago that farmworkers used to live here in his Grandmother’s time. The place told me stories and I liked standing there and listening to them while I made chorizo. But this year I notice I don’t have the same type of bordering on the ridiculous sentiment.

“The voices are silent because they’re waiting for you to tell their story.”

My mind says.

“I think you have to stop trying to pretend you’re Paulo Coelho.”

I tell my mind.

“Maybe. ”

My mind answers.

“Only talk to me again when you have proof you’re Isabel Allende and Milan Kundera’s love child.”

My mind remains silent.

*

It is New Year’s Eve and the sun has just gone down and I stand outside with my pink bottle of bubble soap at the top of my stairs.

I’m blowing bubbles. Because it’s silly and profound at the same time and it is there

and gone and

there and

gone

and there and floating

and gone

And it’s so fragile and impossibly beautiful and there and gone and

That is life.

I think.

“You’re 45 and you’re blowing bubbles.”

My daughter says. It is a statement, an observation. And she gets her camera out and takes pics. She recognises that what is fragile and impossibly beautiful and does whatever she can to document it.

“I’m 46.” I correct her.

And I blow more bubbles.

Blowing bubbles. This might be my new New Years Eve tradition: Reminding oneself of the devastating beauty of fragility.

And I forgot how much fun it was.

This piece first appeared on https://chicaderock.wordpress.com/2020/12/18/blowing-bubbles/

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Chicaderock somehow ended up living in a tiny village in Galicia, Spain.

She blends in well and hunts stories.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing