It’s always been summer here. I’ve asked. No-one can remember it any other way. I can’t.
Along the boulevard where I live there’s a tree lined square and that’s where I sit on a Tuesday, watching the birds and feeling the heat of always noon sun, there’s parkour at the skatepark and mothers manoeuvre their pushchairs over hot cobbles past the Palm Cafe and bandstand, where there is the only afforded shade. It is glorious, and it always has been. Today is carnival day.
Green, red and blue streamers flicker against the sunlit sky and the women wear glittering bikinis with white feathers on their headdresses that float in the gentle movement of their smooth cartwheels. There’s a band today and music fills the air, everyone dances with abandon; hands raised, eyes closed and free. There is light and sun and shimmering, for all the world to see on carnival day. It does occur to be that though, that it’s been a while since we had the sunbursts, when the rays of golden sun would float like snow around us and land softly at our feet. My friend Cat always said that it made her feel sick and wobbly. But, me, I loved the sensation, a weird flowing movement in my stomach, like being hugged. It’s a real shame, I can’t remember the last time that happened. Carnival day was always a day when that happened, sometimes you’d have three carnivals or more a week. I miss those times.
“Valerie, do you want this anymore?” Mum asked, holding up a broken souvenir from the time they visited California.
“Eh … nah,” said Valerie, “it’s been empty for a while, since Rory lost the stopper, “see,” she pointed to the stained carpet.”
“I despair.” Valerie’s mum rolled her eyes.
She had not brought her children up to be messy, hoarders or careless and yet here they were, all three. She looked down at her hand and the broken toy. It was beautiful, it did remind her of happier times so instead of placing it in the bag for the dump she put it in the bag for the nursery. Perhaps they’d like it for the house corner?
The first time it happened I was sitting in the square, thinking. I wondered a little about why I had never gone anywhere else, or done anything else with my life, what was my job anyway? So many questions, but I didn’t get any further with my reverie because, just at that moment, and for the first time in my entire life it began to rain! I didn’t realise what it was at first, of course, never having experienced rain before. It took me a minute to figure it out and it wasn’t subtle either, it came as a deluge, not a light sprinkle. The buildings once pointed and glittering beacons became dull and solid against the sky … was that colour? Grey? I couldn’t be sure. But I knew I was wet, from my t-shirt to my flip-flops and I realised quickly that the boulevard was filling with water. Thinking on my feet, I ran, as fast as I could, to the park.
At the top of Balboa Park tower I could see the flooding, the people and the panic and then just as quickly as it began, it stopped. The flooding dried up like someone had pulled a plug on it and the sun began to come out. It was at that time that I saw my first rainbow, and it was very beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Come on Iris, that belongs in the house corner.” Mrs Wilson had been grateful for the bag of toys that the woman across the road had handed in but the children were obsessed with this particular toy. As she placed it back on the shelf Toby was quick to pick it up and offer it to his baby for her birthday. Iris burst into tears. Wednesday wore on.
Things have certainly changed around here since the first day of rain. The landscape has changed, people have changed. I’m not sure I like it anymore. It’s become dirty and wet. The days of sunshine are fewer and there is a manky canal where Florida Drive used to be.
Sometimes mud falls from the sky in the same way the sunbursts did, it clumps at our feet and we’ve discovered the necessity of boots. This new weather front has made everything dirty and unclear. We want to leave, but we find we cannot bring ourselves to go. This is home. It’s gone from a place of warm bright light to being a dirty old town, that’s what they call it now. A dirty old town.
Cat says it’s good. Unpredictability is keeping us on our toes and the challenges are making us productive. She’s always been super positive. She says we are growing as a people and are better. If it wasn’t for Cat, I’d have been long gone.
“I suppose it makes sense they’d want to keep putting it into the water tray. It does make sense. Maybe it isn’t really ornament material,” Diego shrugged and held up the broken, yet popular, snow globe that had seen more life in the last week than ever before.
“I’m gonna fix it,” he said. It took ages to clean the mud from within, he was thankful there was no-one in there, they’d be feeling hella sick after all that shaking.
I’d been lying down for days, it was a surprise to me how steady Cat had been on her feet lately with these earthquakes, she’s usually the one that can’t stand the movements. Perhaps she’s right? Perhaps some of us are stronger now? She put this cold compress on my head and I slept for what must’ve been a day.
It was strangely warm when I woke up, I couldn’t remember the last time it felt warm when I woke up and so I do remember thinking that I must have been dreaming. But when I looked out of the window the sun was out for the first time in ages and the city looked dazzling once more. The most amazing thing? The sunbursts were back, they looked different to how I remembered them, glittery and far less gold leafy, but they were unmistakably back.
Music filled the air again and I felt hope, hope that I hadn’t felt in the longest time and I smiled. Sometimes you have to go to hell to get to heaven, I suppose. Just like Cat says, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.
Notes:
The songs that inspired this are:
Meditational Field by Susumu Hirasawa which I felt was a total carnival and full of positivity.
The second I heard this one I saw the sunshine and was reminded me a San Diego snow-globe that my grandmother had when I was a child. I wish so much I had it now. Then the idea was born: what if the city was contained?
As the track list went on nothing else was suited to that idea and I started to think of other things until:
Dirty Town by the Pogues came on. Suddenly the snow-globe appeared again and I began to wonder how the people of San Diego would feel if this was their town? Then I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my four year old singing along and the rest, as they say is history.
Wild World by Cat Stevens is not on the playlist, but this was the first song that Spotify threw up at the end of the playlist and I just thought, dammit. Suddenly the story had a final line and it was a happening thing.
Laura Cooney is a writer from Edinburgh. Her first collection Motherbunnet is out now courtesy of Backroom Poetry. Find her on all socials @lozzawriting.
and on her website; www.lozzawriting.com.