How do we feel loved?

Recently a friend of mine crossed from Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island) to Te Waipounamu (the South Island). A rough crossing, everyone was scared. The ferry lifted up, thumped down. Up. Down. Bottles of hand-sanitser and vomit bags were cable-tied everywhere. Signs taped to the walls read: please do not use the bathrooms.

There were no seats on the boat. There were seats, but they were occupied: bag on one seat, person on the middle seat, water-bottle on the adjacent seat. Don’t sit here, this space mine. Rows taken up in this way.

‘The country is depressed, you can feel it down the whole land,’ my friend said, ‘Nobody gives up their seat(s). I hope that I would have given up my seat, but I don’t know. I walked around and around. I didn’t even want to sit down, I just wanted something to hang on to. Eventually, I lay on the floor.’

My friend described lying on the floor, her hat pulled down over her eyes, her coat wrapped cocoon-like around her. She closed her eyes and let the boat rock her. She fell asleep to the rocking.

On the bridge the staff held the vessel into the swell.

‘When I woke up I thought: I feel better; and what we need is more creativity, just small things, everybody making them, a creative revival and — cash will flood into the country with all the making — to show the government — if we are just surviving and not putting our energy into creativity, then: we are just surviving.’

*

My sister makes pottery bowls, huge ones, too big to fit in a cupboard, they need their own space on a bench, or a table. I have two of these bowls. I make ciabatta in one, and keep fruit in the other. Each time I make the bread, kneading it near the glaze my sister rendered a pale, sea-wash blue, I know, I am loved. I look after these bowls, holding them with two hands, feeling the weight and the grain of the etchings my sister made in the clay.

When I asked my sister how her pottery was going, she said, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing it for, so I stopped. I haven’t made any pots for a long time.’

*

I’m at work, at the library at night, trying to keep myself afloat. Yan arrives, holding a piece of blue fabric and a pile of English magazines. She passes me the magazines. Three Spectators. Haven’t read it for ages. Do they still publish poems? I pass the magazines across the library scanner, noticing the newness and gloss of the covers, the satirical art. Yan takes a small step back, checking that no-one else is waiting in the line, ‘Do you wear scarves?’ she asks me.

I glance at the blue fabric she holds, ‘Sometimes,’ I say.

Close up I see, the fabric is entirely scattered with little love hearts. They look jaunty and energetic whizzing around the silk in orange, grey and green.

She smiles, ‘The whole thing is a big love heart you know,’ she unfolds it, a flowing rectangle of hearts within hearts within hearts, ‘My dear, dear friend gave it to me. I’ve felt so bad about not wearing it, but it’s not my colours. Do you think you — ?’

She passes it to me. I wrap it around my neck, lightly warm, it smells clean, like a salt wind at the beach, ‘Thank you,’ I say.

Overnight, I have a waking dream. I see Yan’s friend in a store in England: a big glass window and polished wooden floors, the scarf is in a stand with many others. It catches the light. As soon as Yan’s friend’s hand connects with the fabric she knows: she will buy it for Yan. She will send it to her friend who lives so far away, in another hemisphere. She will wrap Yan in love sent sparkling across the ocean. She doesn’t know the sparkle with go further than she intended, wrapping also me, and you.

*

In my journal I draw some stick figures, each surrounded by a heart. The problem is, there’s so much space between the person and the surrounding line of the heart. How can they feel love, abandoned as they are at the centre of the shape? Is feeling-love a bit random, like a neutrinos from space falling through us? In the wretched hours, is it possible to remember we are wrapped in multitudes of love?

*

I walk down to the rock-pools to paint. I’m happy there kicking my feet against a big slab of ancient volcanic rock, while surf surges in and out, small creatures flash and nibble in the pools. In the distance the land is a steady line. As I finish the painting, it starts to rain. Small dots fall on the page, it’s hard not to feel like the universe is participating.

*

at night the captain
steers the boat, with passengers
herself too, through swell

Thank you for reading.

Kirstie