NEVER-ENDING NIGHT
Black canvas
Dark night
Starlight
Swirling aurora
Clouds obscure
Perpetually temporary
- Pauline
THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT
Darkness, sun hiding, people using artificial light,
indoors, outdoors, penguins for company.
A few people manning the station.
Antarctica in winter,
temperatures well below zero,
all day, all night.
Lose your bearings, day or night,
it doesn't matter, check the 24 hour clock.
Working outside by moonlight,
by starlight, doing your chores.
Inside the station you still sleep,
eat, play games, do activities.
Contact outside by satellite,
can't get through in blizzards.
A handful of crew for company,
hope that you all get on, tough if you don't,
you are all together for the winter months,
Vitamin D, fruit, veges are necessary for your health.
Artificial light is not the same as sunlight.
Snow mobiles, skiing, no more huskies at base, all electric.
No pets, no supermarkets, no children,
not much left, just survival.
- Gail
AM I?
Darkness
Everywhere
No light
No signs of life.
I am alive
(I think)
Or am I?
I must be alive
I feel pain
Physical pain from the cold
Emotional pain from the nothingness.
Is this some sort of purgatory?
That gap between death and whatever happens next
If indeed there is a next.
- Christine
EMPEROR
Hunkered
down, shoulder by shoulder
Beaks
low, eyes closed
The
wind howls by as we stand en masse
and
the darkness grows
Like
one giant creature we flow together, Rotate
away
the coldest point, Stand in the lee
of
our tight-feathered community
And
about us only darkness
About,
the gale whines and roars
Above,
the blackest clouds
Around,
the dark intense
And
cold, and ice, and chill
- Kate Jenkins
ANTARCTICA
I was created in the darkness when there
was no form,
The deep made me in the night,
When it comes to beginnings, I was first
I was a continent, a land mass, 17,000
years in the making, so I’m told
The structuring of my financial
infrastructure, is my DNA
I was formed in the secret parts of the
universe
Today I am still here
My name is unchanged
I am a famous landmark
I am ANTARCTICA
- Haki Davis
NUMB ICE FLOW
I felt the ice
Fall off the end of
the world
And the dark without
light
fail
I saw the empty trail
Forests longed for
Up over the hill and
down
to fetch the pail from
the windowsill
Here such descriptions
fail
The morphing of the
unfamiliar land
And the absence of
life seems to derail my mind
The curves support an
empty nihilism
And ice
frosts over the water
to stop people setting sail
This emptiness, this
cold, seems a collision of ideals
Emotions in my mind
I feel the ice
It is not nice
There is no trace of
mind there
And I think it’s only
fair
To leave myself to
space and fear
As a decision to
confine myself
That I am here to
remind myself
That ice and only ice
Is not existence but
a dissonance
Is felt
A sense of human
fleeting from the South
Ice and only ice is
there
- Dylan Anderson
A NOTE HOME
Dear ____
The sun has set for the last time. I will not see it again for another six months.
This feels very strange and I am afraid. Will I go mad? So much darkness surely can`t be good for one?! Six days seems like an eternity. An eternity of darkness.
On further reflection, there is still much to explore in the dark. It will be an inward time of eating, sleeping, staying still, writing. Finding the limits and the freedoms within and hoping not to go mad in the process.
love from ____
- Pauline
LETTER FROM THE ICE
Hi
Dan
One
month gone and ok so far. There’s only 8
of us here this season, and Scott Base is locked down.
Bernhardt
is a bit of a nutter, keeps everyone else wound up. He has a permit for taking atmospheric measurements and
insists on going outside to take his own instead of using the digital data – on
low-med wind days at least. He barely
makes it back in the doors sometimes.
One of these days he’s going to collapse completely; we’re all hoping he
doesn’t do it outside. He’s from CantyU,
one of the geophys lab lads; from
Austria originally.
Dom,
Mike and Barry pretty much keep to themselves.
They run the particulates lab and have been getting exciting
results. Their exterior sampler has
stood up to the wind gusts so far. They
should all last the distance. Working
with Prof Thomas from Geology.
Cam seems to read the old newspapers all
the time. He’s some sort of
psychologist, here to study us rather than the penguins. “Professional Isolates” is what we are
apparently. Can’t help it that
Antarctica is days from everywhere. He’s
ok to chat with though; a cricket geek, knocked up his first 100 in Feb.
Benji and Marko do ice studies. Race outside when the weather is ok, grab a
bit then off into the freezer room to look down their microscopes. Warmer in there than outside.
I’m off to check over the radios. All working ok so far but some of the batteries need replaced, the
cold can kill them bloody quickly.
Cheers, Steve
- Kate Jenkins
To whom it may concern
I feel as you yourself
may, an absence. Something that was
there or perhaps wasn’t. It might have
been, had I stayed, something cold, something obliterated. Something.
Your love. Yes, that’s right, I
do believe I was searching for your love.
Yes, your love would suffice. But
had I found it, a cruel fate I might have suffered. A sting in the thumb, paralyzing, so when you
lay there tonight, as you do, cling to your pillow, feel something real. Exploration hidden only reveals that not
hidden. So feel driven to love, to lust,
accordingly and morally as yourself. And
feel obliged to do what you do. I know
now, that miles away, my spawn cries.
And wails through that lovely nighttime estate but be not ashamed for
everything in your life has weight, to reach out. So reach out as a lover, feel something, but
make it loud, and feel. Feel the wind
and take the clouds, for ice right now is only there, for me. And accountable is only darkness, so why not
feel and be ecstatic. To whomever it may
concern, feel pain. To whom it may
concern, be the woman I knew, that lived and loved.
To whom it may
concern,
forever
feel.
- Dylan Anderson
To my loving wife,
This is my last diary entry
There is not enough food
And sombre is the mood.
If we are to survive
my dear wife,
it will be
without me.
My next step may help my crew
We are so cold we're turning blue.
These are my last words,
said with a forced smile.
"I'm going outside,
I may be a while."
- Phillip Porteous
To my loving wife,
This is my last diary entry
There is not enough food
And sombre is the mood.
If we are to survive
my dear wife,
it will be
without me.
My next step may help my crew
We are so cold we're turning blue.
These are my last words,
said with a forced smile.
"I'm going outside,
I may be a while."
- Phillip Porteous
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