I. It's January now, and that means that the sidewalk is strewn with dead Christmas trees put out for the council clean up. The heady smell of rotting pine trees imbues the neighbourhood with a sort of gothic festivity. Most houses have pulled down their seasonal fairy lights and fluorescent reindeer, but occasionally one will still pass some plastic Santa Clause decoration, wilted in the heat and covered in a thin layer of grime. The dead trees make for a melodramatic portrait, lying on top of each other like plague victims. Why does everything seem dead in summer? The trees look like dead birds, their green-brown feathers rolling out of their follicles, revealing their craggy, prehistoric limbs.
II.
The Head Next to Mine on the Pillow
When I awoke in the morning
There on the pillow beside me lay the moth.
His fluffy head was still tucked down
Like a late sleeper's, but the eyes, those fascinated
Lamps that had drunk so deep of light
During the night, the eyes were dull.
And a soft powder had fallen
From the tattered wings folded
In the high final dive.
I might have been, perhaps,
The last thing he saw as the light flooded
His gentle body - why, yes, it could be
I was a big thing in his life at the last,
Enigmatic as an Easter Island statue,
Before the tide took him out
To where there is only flying
And all the filaments are friendly.
III. Down at Wylie's Baths, a dead blowfish is floating on top of the water, bobbing up and down like some absurd, swollen apple at a county fair. Its slimy white belly flashes white amongst the blue-green of the water. No one is swimming in the pool anymore. Everyone is watching the fish. Although surely all manner of dead creatures lie rotting on the floor of the ocean pool, nobody dares to share the water with one as visible as the fish. Eventually, one of the life guards wanders over with a long pool skimmer and scoops the blowfish out of the water, along with an empty coke bottle and some seaweed. Slowly, people go back to swimming.
IV.
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| "Caterpillars Eating a Tomato" from Food Chain by Catherine Chalmers. |
A particularly horrifying but also beautiful but mostly horrifying photography series from the 90s that I first heard about on
this episode of
This American Life.
V. I am walking my dogs along the beach front when a black helicopter lands on the hill near the memorial. Literally hundreds of spectators have gathered to watch. I trudge up to the top along the path. Beach goers with their phones out crane their necks over the railing along the cliff face to glimpse at what is going on at the foot of the cliff. A person in a white suit is abseiling down the cliff, whilst another prepares a portable gurney to be winched down. There are several police vehicles parked on the grass, and officers amble around casually behind the police tape. Two reporters with iPads arrive and station themselves on the grass next to the police tape, tapping away at their screens. They seem to know one another, and chat amicably about their morning. Also present: a young mother and her son, watching. She is pointing out the different types of emergency vehicles present. A police officer skulks around to her and stands over her.
You should leave, he says to her,
you don't want the kid to see this.
VI. I find a dead beetle on my walk home one day. The sun is setting. I kneel on the nearest nature strip and dig a hole in the grass with my fingertips. I bury the beetle in the hole. I brush my hands on my jeans and continue walking.
VII. I have nothing more to say now. Goodnight.
