Ala-ala

Daniela De Vera stitches together moments and memories, items and places in a personal reverie.

It reminds me of the person I once was:

• when I look to the corner of my bedroom and notice my music stand opened up to Sarabande from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor. I read the notes on the music sheet and begin to shadow practise the first line. I mentally hear the notes but refuse the urge to take my violin out of its case to actually hear them. A thin layer of dust coats the black figure of the stand; the violin case propped against the wall, too, is speckled in white. I sit for a while and ponder when to resume practice – I don’t.

• when the pile of polaroids on my desk topples off onto the floor as I reach for my apartment key. The photos scatter, images of family and friends turned over or covered by others. I glance at the ones that are visible, analysing the faces of old and new, faces never seen again, and faces of my everyday life. I ignore the mess and leave for work.

• when I visit my childhood home and see the four empty walls before me, walls that became a haven of my existence, now stripped of its disposition. Verging on being a storage unit, miscellaneous items cover my desk, artworks and old frames sit leaning against my wardrobe door — barring access into its interior, while clothes unfamiliar to my body lie in a neat pile at the foot of my bed. The furniture remains in its arrangement, awaiting for someone, anyone, to use it; it will be months before that will happen.

• when I call my parents, and I speak to them in our mother tongue. My voice changes, inflections in my words are altered and I become what they perceive me to be; I am a child yet again. Our conversations consist of advice given and taken.