Ephemera

Reports that as I walked an emptying hall this morning my feet preceded my body too far, like Wile E. Coyote revving his legs in a round then taking off down the curving road, his torso still in place, yet to catch up.

What does it mean when the highlight of the day is brewing tea and drinking it with four spoons of honey? I can see arguments for both sides.

I appreciate the responses to the Emerson below, but, really, that was an essay prompt, and I expect essay answers, so I don't appreciate the responses because not one of them was in essay form.

There is only one more day of work. Tomorrow (Friday) I am on a snowmobile trip - "Morale Booster" - to a section of the ice shelf known as Windless Bight, out there pulling flags before winter hits. Saturday is the final day, Sunday off, Monday packing and cleaning, Tuesday gone, weather permitting. My coworkers have driven me to the edge and this morning I found myself reading about Raskolnikov. I listened to the Talking Heads, returned chemicals no longer needed by grantees, filled paperwork, filed paperwork.

Slowly we grow tired, sleep comes earlier and earlier. So we lie in bed and ponder this, decry all the madness all about, bury ourselves in books, what not. The dreamcatchers seining deep water drift shallow, worn and wide. I'll leave you, Antarctica. Nothing more.


'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'
And then She:
'Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!'

Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'

The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once
A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him: and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.
'Ah, do not mourn,' he said,
'That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell.'

Agree or Disagree? Why?

Traveling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, and sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Pocket Change

It's not a cookie. It's a figmenton of your imagination. All of it.

The fuel tanker Gianella come and gone in the stillness of night and the briskness of evening. First it arrived at 1:30am with the sun at its nadir and hid behind clouds showing mostly purple across the ice, at the far side of the sound beyond the clouds a casted band of gold like a gilded lane for the distant and prestigious mountains on their throne of dirt. The water lay flat and dark as a mirror turned sideways, a smooth thin shell of ice from the dropping temperatures. The Gianella glided silently into berth, split the crust of ice, and pushed low waves rolling to either side where they lapped against the steep and frozen shore. Twelve lines came overboard, five from bow, five from stern, two from the center of the boat, and when the job was finished come 3am the group was driven tiredly up to station. Fuel hoses were connected and 12 million gallons came off, two million headed to pole via skied C-130s which burn three gallons for every one delivered, making that an exchange of six million gallons for two million delivered. So they – the NSF, Raytheon – are working on a more permanent traverse route from McMurdo to Pole, as now they run only one annual ground traverse, up the Ross Ice Shelf then south to the middle of the continent, blasting snow bridges across crevasses when progress is blocked, nearly 1,000 miles over nothing. The maintenance costs for a permanent route would be astronomical. It's an absurd and useless vision. The weather will not have it.

The Gianella departed at 4:30pm Friday afternoon, emptied of fuel and reloaded with ballast water, towed out to open water by the Oden. No fanfare, the town bustling at that time. Colder temperatures are moving in, chilly blasting wind coming from the gap between two islands, only a thin notch at such distance, like a pistol sight. A powerful enough rifle, fired through this notch, might ding the new Pole station. A notch straight south up snowy plateaus. I am switching to nightshift now in preparation for arrival of the cargo vessel, return to work on Tuesday night and transition, eventually, to twelve hour shifts. At least I get to drive a small forklift, unload containers so others can count and label boxes.

All around base an undercurrent of imminence, the season winding down, C-17 flights starting this week back to Christchurch with employees and grantees, and a strong curiosity about the world to which we all return. I've been reading news and hearing stories of hopeful politics and a crumbling world, news coming unignorably like heavy boots trod on the floor overhead, discord and passion even down here among these small thousand. “Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?”