a picture for sontag

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when it leaves...

Later


much later, he imagines it somewhat like the ebbing of a high tide.


The exact point of it's turn indiscernible under a fecund moon. When the fish suddenly stop biting the fisherman, so intent on the next bite, only realises it is already departing when he next pulls his hook to the surface and finds it not missing bait as he thought, but ignored and untouched. More so, that first clear sign is disbelieved as an aberration and the line is swiftly run out once more and fingered optimistically, patiently 


waiting until


finally it is only the tardy arrival of the grotesque.... 


eyeless pilchards festooned with sea lice, guts distending and the unbecoming writhe of a Port Jackson shark slapping against the gunnel, fantastical and disturbing in the moonlight, which irrefutably signals the now vast emptiness of the sea. Removing the hook from deep in the fish's impossibly white throat, recognition of some shared futile and primordial febrility gnaws deeply at the fisherman's gut... and he sits unblinking, barrenly attempting to reconstruct the point where time and tide stopped and 


waited


before slipping away unseen.

Klondike River

All Yukon belong to my papas. All Klondike belong my people. Country now all mine. Long time all mine. Hills all mine; caribou all mine; moose all mine; rabbits all mine; gold all mine.

White man come and take all my gold. Take millions, take more hundreds fifty millions, and blow ‘em in Seattle. Now Moosehide Injun want Christmas. Game is gone. White man kills all moose and caribou near Dawson, which is owned by Moosehide. Injun everywhere have own hunting grounds. Moosehides hunt up Klondike, up Sixtymile, up Twentymile, but game is all gone. White man kill all.

Chief Isaac quoted in Dawson Daily News, 15 Dec. 1911.

today i thought of you

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