Odysseus
Hydrangea
Darkness visible
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
He had only moved to the city recently
He had only moved to the city recently and was not yet familiar with the circuitous roads that seem to meander and twist back into yet further streets named after trees and tropical plants. Cordia into bamboo into oleander into aralia into poinciana. As he walked along the road he paused to try and locate the source of a particular odour. It was a sweet smell. Of fermenting fruit. And seeing nothing that might account for it he continued walking.
There was nothing especially uniform about the houses in this suburb except that each appeared to maintain an indifference to the other. Each house whether carefully maintained or roughly sitting behind metal linked fences was a territory unto itself and in this sense each distinct rectangular kingdom was like the next and the man expected that each housed a family that was much like the next: husband, wife, children, pet. Any individuality was lost on the man, who walked with the slightest stoop, eyes pinched in the sunlight. Whatever he expected from these houses the man saw no one as he walked. The streets were empty and apart from the rustle of lizards as they emptied from the sidewalk sunshine into underbrush and leafmeal the only other noise came from birds.
Small, white-faced double-barred finches peeped and hurried into dried grass nests constructed amongst the leaves of pandanus. Olive backed oriole swooped ponderously then disappeared into a mess of greenery while bar-shouldered doves, with their rust-red necks, scaled with tiny feathers, scattered amongst the seeds and debris of pathways. The man, who may not have noticed these things, still walked and in the heat of early afternoon began to tire. His shoulders stooped further and he felt within himself a quickening of the blood, an unease that he carried with him suddenly bursting. He appeared as a man who had at once remembered that he had forgotten something and a concerned and pained expression fell upon his face. He was not certain why he had become downcast but were it not for his surroundings, he thought, he would have dropped to his knees and wept. He thought of his wife and family and friends, and felt for all this utterly alone.
The man was not prone to melancholy and he gathered his thoughts amidst the uncertainty of his sudden sadness. He wondered what sort of self examination of his inner feelings might be necessary to determine precisely why he felt so overcome with an emotion that he imagined approximated grief. For a moment he considered howling, expelling this uncomfortable stone that swelled and constricted in his stomach, but at the last moment, as he had just begun to raise his head but before he had urgently thrust his face skyward and opened his mouth, he hesitated and instead continued to walk.
A boy is sitting, windswept in the prow of a dinghy
It is late evening and a boy is sitting, windswept, in the prow of a dinghy. His father navigates across the sand pan, between moorings and markers. The sound of the engine makes it impossible to talk so the boy sits silent, facing outward, eyes lowered, his pale face bristling at the water’s occasional flecking. There is the faint smell of fuel and wet rope and the boy wriggles his bare feet which have begun to stiffen in the cold water that sloshes at the bottom of the boat. Looking out across the bay the boy notices light reflecting across the water which, just for a second, seems like the scales of some shimmering monstrous creature. The boy quickly wipes a wet hand on his trousers and tightly grips the gunwale. The boy’s father looks back at the trail of the boat frowning at his failure to negotiate a more direct course. As the small boat passes the last of the navigation markers the boy’s father turns the throttle accelerating into the bay. The boat raises against the thrust, leaping into the larger waves of deeper water and in an uncomfortable rhythm begins to shudder and slap across the bay. The boy’s weight can’t stop the prow from lifting and the father slows the boat sensing but not seeing the tightening grip his son maintains on the side and the way that his toes have curled and legs have braced to try and hold. So once again they slowly make their way across the water. The man watches his son. He watches him pause for a moment to pull his woollen cap tightly down over his head. The father’s cigarette has long been extinguished - the ember was blown brightly from the tip as he pushed the little boat out through the sand and silt - but it still hangs wetly from his lips, the end frayed with tobacco strands. The father gazes into the sky and even now, after so many years and so many journeys, is amazed at how vivid the stars appear. He locates Orion, the three bright stars that form the belt of The Hunter. Without knowing why it seems important the father wishes he knew other constellations, other names of things, so that he might tell his mute son. And as he looks again at the tight woollen cap and outline of the boy he is gripped by the sense that he doesn’t know enough at all.