Alex entered the room, the children knew they should still be asleep, but the arrival of their Uncle the night before was too exciting and the anticipation of fun and games too much to keep their eyes closed.
‘What is going on here you little ratbags.’ Uncle Alex teased the children. There was some little giggling coming from under the duvet. ‘Are there two little thieves hiding from their Uncle under there?’ Alex moved towards the bed where two small children were hiding.
‘We not thieves’ came a muffled denial and then a head popped out, ‘you are a thief’ said Sarah
‘Yea you are a thief’ confirmed her younger brother.
‘I am not’ Uncle Alex replied before jumping on the bed to wrestle the two children. After a few minutes of rough and tumble Sarah’s brother pipped up.
‘Why did you call us thieves?’
Uncle Alex pointed to the jar by the side of the bed filled up with fairy lights. ‘Look, there is the evidence’
Sarah and her brother looked at each other puzzled.
Darkness was approaching, we had been on the road for 32hours, desperately seeking the sun. The journey had been long and in hindsight not too dramatic, but at that moment the patience levels were low and even the simplest of tasks, which kiosk to buy a celebratory beer from, had sparked conflict. We were tired.
As we took the first sips from the cold cans, a taste that in actual fact neither of us wanted, the smell of a pillow our only desire, the street lamps came on and there, under the yellow light, a child threw a basketball to his father. The ball slipped through his fingers and hit his chin, the child fell backwards laughing and his father raced over to wrestle with him. We were 100m down the road before I could see the outcome, but a smile crept across my face. We had made it.
We were promised everything. It had never happened to me before but we walked into the room, ready for a fight and… There was no resistance, no maybe, no we will think about it, no no’s! Just yes… It was unerring.
Before we went into the meeting we had discussed what we were willing to give up and what we wanted to fight for, but when all of those things were granted, I have to admit, we were a bit weak asking for more, timid. But they granted us more anyway. We were basically promised the world, so we gave in, we just accepted that all things were going to be great and signed.
And it was not like they didn’t deliver, for the first three months we couldn’t believe it, we were given everything that they promised, all the tools we needed and all the extra resources we asked for, we were swimming in luxury.
But then it changed, however it was not them who changed things, it was us, we had been drowning in the good stuff and it was suffocating. We just didn’t have any fight, any edge, we lost our spark, our willingness to think creatively, we just expected things to be there in place and for people to get it.
We had it so we expected everyone else too as well. But that’s not how it works. Some people out there are still fighting, searching, they have the edge. We were just stuck in the honey pot with all the others who have it, or at least think they have it.
‘It’s like you and the water are united you feel the power of pachamama running through you, everything else stops, you just feel…’ Sophie turned to the mountain standing in front of them, then up to the sky. ‘… I don’t know, you feel alive.’
‘Well that sounds all well and good, but you can feel alive in lots of other ways and not have to spend years rolling around in the mud.’
Sophie turned to her sister and looked at her, frustrated, she had heard all these arguments before, you should do this, you should do that. Initially it had angered her, but she had grown to accept it. However this was her sister and she wanted her to feel, to understand what she was talking about.
‘How many times have you woken up on Monday and felt your head pounding, looked at your alarm clock and feared the week ahead?’
‘Eeeeeerrr… like every Monday.’
‘How many times have you got to Friday and felt a huge sense of relief?’
‘Comon Sophie… get to the point.’
‘Well I don’t have that… ever… Not the Monday/Friday bit, but the sense of anxiety and the huge sense of relief. It doesn’t exist in my life. I just have me and a sense of me.’
Sophie’s sister tool a moment to think.
‘But you worry about some shit. I mean you have to, money for example, you have to have money to eat and you have to eat, or does the land magically provide some spiritual nourishment that replaces the bodily need for food!’ She laughed at her sister and a little at her own joke.
‘Shut up’ Sophie replied playfully. ‘Look of course there are things that I need to survive, I am just saying that the drastic opposites are not healthy, the ups and downs. Everything I experience is much simpler. I have what I have, if I need more I work a way to get it, but I don’t fight with the world or the expectations society places upon us. It’s just nature and me and…’
She paused thinking of the times it literally had been just her and nature, times when she had been very lonely. Then continued. ‘It can be lonely, but you find joy in other living things and this reminds you that you are alive.’
Sophie’s sister smiled a comforting smile, ‘I think I like my iphone too much.’
Emily walked up to the walled garden, took one look back at her sister, let out a long sigh and scaled the wall. Davina looked on, the corners of her mouth unsure whether to bloom into a smile or wither to concern. ‘Can you see it?’ Davina called out as Emily dropped down into the garden. But she received no reply, Emily was either ignoring her or out of earshot. ‘Is the witch there?’ She called a little louder. But again there was no response, her options of ignoring and unheard changed to under a spell or dead. ‘Are you okay?’ She started to shout, but failed to finish as her subconscious mind prevented the words from leaving her mouth, afraid of drawing attention to her sister on the wrong side of the wall.
‘What are you looking at?’ Mum asked Nathan as she tucked him into bed. Nathan didn’t reply he just wriggled a little lower and pulled the covers to his chin. ‘What did Monkey do today?’ Mum changed tact.
‘He is very old isn’t he?’ Nathan replied in reference to his pet monkey.
‘He is you are right. He used to belong to your Daddy.’
‘So he is older than Daddy?’
Mum stopped to think for a moment, ‘I think your Daddy got him when he was about 2 or 3 years old, so Daddy is a little bit older but not much.’
Nathan paused for thought. ‘Have you looked behind his ear? Look at the colour of his fur.’ Nathan pulled Monkey’s ear back to reveal soft yellow fur. ‘Did his whole face look like that once?’
‘I am not sure, you will have to ask your father that.’
‘It feels like Muji’s fur under his chin its soft and cuddly, will Muji’s face change like Monkey’s?’
‘Maybe, Muji is a puppy still and he will get older, but I think he will always stay cuddly’
‘I don’t want to get old’
Mum laughed and hugged her son, ‘I don’t want you to get old either, shall we make a promise to stay young forever?’
‘Yea like Monkey’s ears and Muji’s fur.’ Nathan turned to his mother and smiled his big smile. Mum kissed him on his forehead, tucked the duvet around him and Monkey and agreed.
Life From the Dirt 