TEXT:
Breek Jou Nek
by Michal Kruger
The car is split in half. One side looks into a vertical cliff and the other the vast ocean. The clouds are arranged for us: a trail of bulky white towards the horizon and distant wispy shreds that stretch over the sky. Cars are parking at the edge and people walk on the cliffs to watch the spectacle. A windless evening has made a tapestry of the ocean. It is an endless sheet only breaking on the horizon to make a crisp slash across the earth. We stop to join the onlookers. A young man; thin, tall and wearing flip flops, long blonde hair, backwards flat cap and an air of studying media and marketing in Cape Town; is drinking beer with his friends. He starts up a small drone that hovers above the ground before tentatively flying beyond his reach, beyond the massive fall of the cliff and towards the sun. I watch the drone, transfixed by its levitation and steady high noise. The sun is now a perfect circle, the bottom of it just starting to be cut by the ocean. The drone is flying into it. Everything is blanketed in its orange glow and trails its long shadow. The sun is so saturated that my eyes tingle and pulse with white waves. It is a bleeding-heart pumping hot on the horizon. The drone is a small dot on the sun. I imagine the footage it is collecting. Wide angles of the clouds and the sea steadily coming closer, growing brighter. Perhaps it is not looking at the sunset at all but back towards us. I wonder what I look like staring into the sun. My face is pink while I look into its last moments. Perhaps I look golden in the light. I see my body growing smaller and smaller until it is engulfed by the rocky facade of the cliff. Like a children’s game, you must search the picture for me. There! I can just make out your bright face!
The drone is now flying higher. Going beyond the yellows and growing paler in the backdrop. There it rests in between space. Neither sunset nor last measure of the blue day. So pale is the sky it appears white, washing us clean. I float in the faded line that separates us from yesterday and tomorrow. It is impenetrably now! The drone seems more etched in this white light. What is it seeing now? Perhaps this is the vantage to best see the world from?My eyes wander from the sun to the ocean. I follow it through the mouth of the mountain to the bay. Giant houses with patio furniture and clean sea sprayed windows are starting to turn on their lights. They blink at me as if to say a greeting. I am not sure whether it is welcoming me or saying goodbye. The bay is cast in the shadow of the mountain. The blinking houses can’t see the sunset, only the white dregs from its waning brightness. I imagine her in her house. She hears the steady tick tick tick coming from the damp garden. A branch has fallen on the bloody electric fence again! She will have to tell the garden boy on Monday to take it off. Hopefully he will come this week. Last week he couldn’t make it because he was sick or something. A simple Whatsapp message reading: Cant come, sick madam. Perhaps she will go by the petrol station to get him a pie and a coke for lunch on the way back from her doctor appointment. I think he likes the pepper steak pie, she thinks, but she can’t remember. For now, she looks out the window at the ocean. What a beautiful evening, she thinks. She switches the lights on. In an instance, the ocean and the sunset and the clouds and the breeze vanish while the inside rushes onto the windows. A view of a tasteful living room lit by tasteful orange lighting, staring back at her.
The drone is so far now it is only the faintest spec in the sky. It moves higher still. Away from all remaining light of the sun and into the darkening blue sky. A sharp rock is digging into me from sitting on it too long. It hurts but I don’t shift my weight. The darkness is coming from behind me and covering my view like the visor on a motorbike helmet. I try to follow the drone but it has disappeared for me. I wonder how it will ever make its way back. Are we still bright enough on this mountain?Everything is engulfed by this new shade. The first stars are already appearing. They look like reverse drones. Bright pinpricks on the navy staring at us. Soon the sky will be filled with stars and I will strain my neck to look at them all. They look down at us and our farmlands and houses and tractors and fences and roads and bridges. The line between the ocean and the sky is thinning, slowly becoming one. The blues are returning to the sea, but blackened from the bright day before it. All the edges have been rounded out and the lines erased. It is only us and the darkness and the pinpricks.
The show is over and we must all leave. One by one I hear a car start and make its way down the mountain pass. It smells of musty ocean and gasoline and sweaty sunscreen. I follow them. Relief spreads down my legs all the way to my toes as I finally get up from the rock. A procession of red lights shines back at me. The car ahead is that of the young man with the drone. I never saw the drone coming back. I must have missed it while I was walking back to the car. I wonder where he put it. Perhaps it is in the boot of the car with a loose towel from a previous trip to the beach. Or maybe it is on his lap, safely stowed away, its contents too precious to part with until he is home. We sit in traffic all the down the mountain until everyone splinters off into the directions of their own blinking homes with lights that reflect onto the windows.
| | |
The drone is now flying higher. Going beyond the yellows and growing paler in the backdrop. There it rests in between space. Neither sunset nor last measure of the blue day. So pale is the sky it appears white, washing us clean. I float in the faded line that separates us from yesterday and tomorrow. It is impenetrably now! The drone seems more etched in this white light. What is it seeing now? Perhaps this is the vantage to best see the world from?My eyes wander from the sun to the ocean. I follow it through the mouth of the mountain to the bay. Giant houses with patio furniture and clean sea sprayed windows are starting to turn on their lights. They blink at me as if to say a greeting. I am not sure whether it is welcoming me or saying goodbye. The bay is cast in the shadow of the mountain. The blinking houses can’t see the sunset, only the white dregs from its waning brightness. I imagine her in her house. She hears the steady tick tick tick coming from the damp garden. A branch has fallen on the bloody electric fence again! She will have to tell the garden boy on Monday to take it off. Hopefully he will come this week. Last week he couldn’t make it because he was sick or something. A simple Whatsapp message reading: Cant come, sick madam. Perhaps she will go by the petrol station to get him a pie and a coke for lunch on the way back from her doctor appointment. I think he likes the pepper steak pie, she thinks, but she can’t remember. For now, she looks out the window at the ocean. What a beautiful evening, she thinks. She switches the lights on. In an instance, the ocean and the sunset and the clouds and the breeze vanish while the inside rushes onto the windows. A view of a tasteful living room lit by tasteful orange lighting, staring back at her.
| | |
The drone is so far now it is only the faintest spec in the sky. It moves higher still. Away from all remaining light of the sun and into the darkening blue sky. A sharp rock is digging into me from sitting on it too long. It hurts but I don’t shift my weight. The darkness is coming from behind me and covering my view like the visor on a motorbike helmet. I try to follow the drone but it has disappeared for me. I wonder how it will ever make its way back. Are we still bright enough on this mountain?Everything is engulfed by this new shade. The first stars are already appearing. They look like reverse drones. Bright pinpricks on the navy staring at us. Soon the sky will be filled with stars and I will strain my neck to look at them all. They look down at us and our farmlands and houses and tractors and fences and roads and bridges. The line between the ocean and the sky is thinning, slowly becoming one. The blues are returning to the sea, but blackened from the bright day before it. All the edges have been rounded out and the lines erased. It is only us and the darkness and the pinpricks.
The show is over and we must all leave. One by one I hear a car start and make its way down the mountain pass. It smells of musty ocean and gasoline and sweaty sunscreen. I follow them. Relief spreads down my legs all the way to my toes as I finally get up from the rock. A procession of red lights shines back at me. The car ahead is that of the young man with the drone. I never saw the drone coming back. I must have missed it while I was walking back to the car. I wonder where he put it. Perhaps it is in the boot of the car with a loose towel from a previous trip to the beach. Or maybe it is on his lap, safely stowed away, its contents too precious to part with until he is home. We sit in traffic all the down the mountain until everyone splinters off into the directions of their own blinking homes with lights that reflect onto the windows.
