The Year Of Living Carefully

It's been a year now since this whole madness started. The first lock-down, the new normality, the second wave, the third wave. Travel bans, movement restrictions, work from home, zoom parties. But above all the fear of losing our loved ones.

Three years ago, I left my studio flat in London and moved to Galicia, the north west corner of Atlantic Spain. I traded my city life, the dance shows at Sadlers Wells, the matinees at the ICA, the brunches at the Borough market, for the peace and quiet of a big white house in the countryside, half an hour drive from a major town.

During the lock-down every morning I woke up and looked at the outline of the pine trees on the opposite hills as the day slowly began to beak. After breakfast I would walk down to the river. It was so silent that the noise of the running water was my sole company. My father was dying, alone in hospital bed in Rome. As the world outside was closing in, I'd expected the one inside me to expand. The reality is more complicated.

I accepted the solitude like a gift of freedom: my secret escapades to the abandoned medieval churches, the overgrown graveyards, the heavy rains that batter this region from March till June. I enjoyed it until I began to enjoy it so much that when the world began to open again, cautiously, I retreated, as if declining a generous invitation, and instead I grieved for the living.

Summer flushed away, fast, as always. A string of long exhausting days, the blinding light, the dust collecting on my plants, my charred skin.

Autumn crept along, a long shadow, a magical mist that was not completely benign. In October we had two full moons, and I felt on edge, emotions rushing like Furies, as if the ground almost pulled away from my feet. And yet I was heavy, I caught myself squatting behind the wall, waiting for the big tragedy, the one that had already occurred. The vine I planted the year before was a knotty dry thing that finally bloomed. Under the wide blushing leaves, one single bunch swelled with round green-golden grapes. They were bitter.

I got myself a record player and played new music that sounded old, easy melodies tumbling down onto my desk where I sat and plotted something for the next spring.