It got kind of depressing...spacedmonkeyDecember 3 2012, 20:51:07 UTC
But since I didn't even know where Ballarat was in Australia when I wrote about the lanterns, I have to blame John...
Dark Sonnet (Part 1)
Death, I was once told, is far more a matter for the living than the departed. While the axis of my world shifted on that fatal day, it was I who had to gather up the pieces and try as I may to rearrange them into some semblance of a life. In doing so, sadly, I had found so many gaping holes where a madman had once stood that it looked about as watertight as a fishing net. Truly, I was a lost cause.
When I had been a boy on the ship home from Ballarat I had made the acquaintance of another child also returning home from Australia. Stephens was the sole charge of his nanny, a woman who showed a singular devotion to the child in a fashion that had been completely foreign to me. It drove young Stephens mad, of course, but you never really appreciate something like that when you are nine.
Young Stephens had not been “young” to me at the time since he was a whole year older and braver; constantly escaping from his nanny to seek adventure and dragging my wide eyed and generally unsupervised self behind him. In retrospect I can start to see some parallels that I haven’t really considered before so perhaps it is best to dash those memories away.
“Come along, Watson! Come and see!”
Of course, once Pandora opened that blasted box it became impossible to get all of the darkness back in.
“The deck is slippery!”
“Of course it is. It’s trying to freeze but the salt in the sea won’t let it. Do come on, you have to see this!”.
“It will still be there if I walk, I’m quite sure.”
“It might not. We’re not going to be in the cold for long once we start heading north. All we need is a change in the wind and it will be gone.”
“All I need is to slip and I shall be in the cold forever. I’d rather not drown.”
“It would solve your gambling debts.”
“Tuppence is hardly a King’s ransom.”
“Tuppence is a start. You’re not going to drown, Watson. Give me your hand and look!”
Honestly, now I come to think about it the whole thing is moderately horrifying when I recall how blindly I had followed a slightly unhinged nine year old in the dead of night. However, what is worse seems to be that I did exactly the same thing twenty two years later without, apparently, sparing a second thought for what had happened the first time around. I am a fool even out of my cups.
“If this is another porthole that will get my ears boxed I’d rather just leave it to my imagination.”
“Honestly, are you sure you’ve been breeched because I feel sure I am talking to a girl!”
“I have no reply to that which doesn’t involve punching you.”
Dark Sonnet (Part 1)
Death, I was once told, is far more a matter for the living than the departed. While the axis of my world shifted on that fatal day, it was I who had to gather up the pieces and try as I may to rearrange them into some semblance of a life. In doing so, sadly, I had found so many gaping holes where a madman had once stood that it looked about as watertight as a fishing net. Truly, I was a lost cause.
When I had been a boy on the ship home from Ballarat I had made the acquaintance of another child also returning home from Australia. Stephens was the sole charge of his nanny, a woman who showed a singular devotion to the child in a fashion that had been completely foreign to me. It drove young Stephens mad, of course, but you never really appreciate something like that when you are nine.
Young Stephens had not been “young” to me at the time since he was a whole year older and braver; constantly escaping from his nanny to seek adventure and dragging my wide eyed and generally unsupervised self behind him. In retrospect I can start to see some parallels that I haven’t really considered before so perhaps it is best to dash those memories away.
“Come along, Watson! Come and see!”
Of course, once Pandora opened that blasted box it became impossible to get all of the darkness back in.
“The deck is slippery!”
“Of course it is. It’s trying to freeze but the salt in the sea won’t let it. Do come on, you have to see this!”.
“It will still be there if I walk, I’m quite sure.”
“It might not. We’re not going to be in the cold for long once we start heading north. All we need is a change in the wind and it will be gone.”
“All I need is to slip and I shall be in the cold forever. I’d rather not drown.”
“It would solve your gambling debts.”
“Tuppence is hardly a King’s ransom.”
“Tuppence is a start. You’re not going to drown, Watson. Give me your hand and look!”
Honestly, now I come to think about it the whole thing is moderately horrifying when I recall how blindly I had followed a slightly unhinged nine year old in the dead of night. However, what is worse seems to be that I did exactly the same thing twenty two years later without, apparently, sparing a second thought for what had happened the first time around. I am a fool even out of my cups.
“If this is another porthole that will get my ears boxed I’d rather just leave it to my imagination.”
“Honestly, are you sure you’ve been breeched because I feel sure I am talking to a girl!”
“I have no reply to that which doesn’t involve punching you.”
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