An African Red Sunset

Image: Sunset by Elton T. Shapiro

2015

The painstakingly aching feeling of knowing one is not loved by anyone 

Janine Rodrigues

My brother and I used to dream about Africa when we were little. We knew that Africa was on the other side, across from the Atlantic Ocean, under a different sky. We had no clue how far it was to get to that other side, and I guess that was one of the beauties of being a child: not knowing. Today we know the distances all too well, and maybe that's why we are so far away still: far away from those memories, far away from each other, far away from Africa. Just like the red and lonely sky in this photograph. Open arteries in the sky, my eyes shout effervescently. I hide a tear that stubbornly reveals how I feel about what I see on his wall. I kiss an African red. My arms are not long enough to belong in there, to belong. Not even that. All of a sudden, I am seven years old again. I remember the hidden meanings in the surroundings. Our first dog's name was Savanna, a reference to the African savannas. We used to collect National Geographic Magazines and I have a feeling that my passion for photography has started back then. I also have a feeling that my passion for animals has also started by looking at those beautiful photos of animals I didn't even imagine were real. Just like Africa, it seemed like they were dreams. Dreams thought out by some kind of God. Were we her plan; her blueprints, perhaps?

Those afternoons on the beach are still so fresh in my retina. It does not seem like thirty years have gone by. We have closed so many chapters in our lives since. Since the salty waves in the South have been part of our family. We went thru so much, haven't we? We collapsed a few times and we have kept on going a few times as well. We piled up a series of new memories. Some of them so bitter. Some of them so pointless that they just occupy a space in time. But the ocean is still there. It takes longer to get to it, I have been told, and I believe him. I believe that those dreams are all much further away than ever. 

I wonder what color this very same sky was back then. Did it bleed less before? Was that red eye less alive than now? Or was it that back then even the sun was more red? Were the clouds less dense, less in love than in here? The tree stands alone, vulnerable. Stern. She wears her heart on her sleeve. It tries to hug the sky, but the sky, oh, the sky is a hurt lonely soul and openly afraid. The sky is wound. The tree insists. It grows upwards. It stretches in trying. It gets stronger. Just like me after having cried the love I had for you until the shattered, endless pieces have been removed from my flesh. 'Cause that is what it felt like: it felt like those love pieces had been cutting my flesh open. Restlessly. 

I kiss the photo with my eyes. How dry this soil is, I wonder. If I could, I would touch it in its entirety. How dry, how dark, how lonely? The night is falling upon us. We search and search. We get tired and we fight life. Time and time again. The sun is still repeatedly following the other side. The ocean is still salty. But my face and our hands are not. Not the same, not in sync. Not standing still. Our tides are less frequent. We don't savor anything as much as we used to. Africa seems so far away from our dreams and yet the red is still here, holding me, taking me places. The light here sometimes is borderline intense. Orangy. Full of force. Passionate. But never this red. Never so naked. Never so real. And I pause to see the clouds on this side:  and the birds and my own little heart that aches the unmistakably pain of being alone.