The specimen informs: love is a floating point, no meaning except in things, time equals loss. Of course we may be wrong in detail.
This sample was found in Antarctica as two individual pieces which fit perfectly,
like two lobes of a frozen lake, two seasons, wings of a ludicrous bird, as illustrated in Figs 2 & 3.
We used to be afraid of comets.
(Imagine closing your eyes in the course of meeting someone,
seeing that moment through the distance of time.) This quality might be called largeness.
We used to live each day as if this life were someone else’s. Then the largeness
of our mortality loomed like mineral silos across the salt plains, the reactor details
growing finer as we approach the floating point of the ranges beyond. Someone
always turns to watch the point recede into the horizon, perfectly
expressing the sadness of birds migrating. We remember watching the comet
recede into the dawn as birds, two or three miniscule figures,
approached the place where we slept. We fell in love once. Two or three
times we have broken someone’s hearts. This chart represents the enormity
in our silence; love, the desire to possess the loved, hurtling like a comet
into distance (turn to look how far we’ve come). So we learned to hide details
even when we meant them. We wept perfectly
whenever we read old letters from someone
who used to love us, the complete specimen, someone
we should have taken better care of. Two or three
points of data perfectly
supporting the theory: possession is the decaying of love, the largeness
of the bell-shaped curve, the scatter plot of the departure date
of birds, details
that beg the question: was it ever too late? We remember you returning like a comet
spraying stars into our night. Could we have hoped to see a comet
more than once in a lifetime? Even if we stay up late enough, someone
is always pointing out the distance, details
we cannot ignore. In Antarctica there are deserts that are among the two or three
driest places on Earth. The ranges there, the shadows of their largeness,
freeze rivers in their channels, lakes clear to their bottoms. My desires were like these rocks worn perfectly
smooth by the fingers of the wind over millions of years perfectly
cold like the breath of a comet.
All this silence, all this looking backward into the distance! The largeness
of the past is brought to bear as a tiny point upon someone.
And where are the birds? There is nothing for them to eat and yet two or three
of them stray up these dry valleys each year seeking something, their death not worthy of detail.
So the specimen perfectly exemplifies the point: perhaps you are someone
to pass through our sky like a comet: in the thing itself, figure two or three
approaches to meaning. The night enlarges us. This distance, like our desire, is just a detail.
Bill Jirsa works in the computer department for the US Antarctic Program in McMurdo Station. He lives in Colorado when he is not in Antarctica.
Image: Skua standing on Twin-Otter aircraft, Ariana Owens
Fri 10 Feb 2006