Divinations – by Gayelene Carbis
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I had this fall in the street and fell to the ground like flour.
After that I became very frail, as if I was old, unsteady on my feet.
Suddenly I was less vital – as if my normal organs could only function
if I was whole, complete; as if there is something unfinished about
falling. A friend one birthday wanted to come to my place and bake
a chocolate cake (with me) but I said I could be called out (and besides
I’d never baked a cake before and a birthday wasn’t the place to start).
I’d half-hoped he’d bring the chocolate cake without me having to be
involved in the baking but apparently there are things in people’s minds
which are quite convoluted and no amount of sieving will find them out.
So no chocolate cake came and I had to survive without it. But the thing is
once you fall for an idea you can never forget it. There is something
voracious about hope; about dreams. They rise and rise. I rose from
the ground, from the pavement, the street, the suburb. All my vital signs
were intact, a stranger assured me. She handed over a little book,
New Testament and Psalms, as if what had saved me wasn’t the bandage,
the pawpaw, the cold bottle of water she’d brought me. I said I’d read it
but I didn’t. I opened it at a page as if it was magical and would show me
something about something. I forget what the words were. What I mean is
the way you open it at a page and read a line as if it’s a message from
the universe, I couldn’t think of the word for it, but I knew I knew it.
I opened a page like a prayer or a promise but I didn’t like whatever it was
so I turned it to another page and read something else, but I know very well
that’s not how it works. If it works. I don’t believe in things like that but still,
when you fall, you find yourself doing things quite out of character, as if some
other version of you gets up from that ground. This year I might ask that friend
if he can show me how to bake that chocolate cake. It’s textures I don’t like,
the way flour feels in your hands. After all, I’m not Demi Moore in Ghost with
her hands running through that clay, which I found quite gross, even though
she had Patrick Swayze behind her, simulating some kind of gooey wet sex.
I just want a chocolate cake. Is that too much to ask of the universe? ▼
Image: Unaizat Abdulgamidova - Pexels
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