A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS
We presented a picture, asked what you saw and assembled the passages of poetry and prose that were submitted to create a shared vision.
Thank you to everyone that dived into their imagination and joined us on this particular adventure.
We put together the fragments we received instinctually, seeing certain patterns in the contributions, gathering recurring motifs we found in your musings, to present just one way the path could lead.
The unearthing of a body, a lone person haunted by memories, searching for transformation, digging for a lost soul.
There are many ways to assemble and many processes and perspectives but in light of our own interpretation, we decided to name this next exquisite corpse tale, 'The Island of Eternal Return.'
"Some say the island was a magnet, it's poles attracting past lives, for our future selves to come and exhume. Many returned to the place of their birth, confronting memories long since buried in the black earth..."
What does the island say to you?
H.N. (intro)
Somewhere distant from here a ring of cypress trees stand upon an island. In their centre the black earth has been recently disturbed. It was always said that the waters that surround the isle were impassable, yet a small boat is moored at a lonely jetty, illuminated only by the light of a full moon that shines down from the cloud strewn sky.
Amanda Votta:
Here in this gods-haunted land, an isolated mist-shrouded island ringed by forgetful waters, enclosed with sacred cypress that witnessed your earlier form, I sought your hidden name. A place I somehow arrived in a small boat tied to an unlikely jetty. I followed your voice, the trail of signals and signs you leave in your wake, to your island. I gazed down into the earth, disturbed when I arrived.
Matthew Henshaw:
In the boat is an old iron spade, wrapped in an oily green cloth. I took it up and made my way to the island, following the trampled trail of weeds. The moon created long shadows that did not seem to originate just from the trees, but suggested other observers, creeping through the foliage.
Kia Alice Groom:
What does it mean, to be treasure? To be precious and pure, a thing of cut glass and crystal? There are so many ways to mirror and The Thing in The Hole knows reflection in every language--how to prism and disperse, how to cultivate and refract. Sometimes It has fingers, eyelids. Sometimes it is an ancient tome, its pages oily and frayed from decades of hungry consumption.
Alcebiades Diaz:
Even in the moonlight, the object before my eyes—still soiled by the earth that gently enveloped it—seemed inscrutable. It could have been many things: a dagger, a mirror, or an amulet. There was something indecipherable about it. I thought of countless names, hoping that by giving it a name or a possible designation, it might return to the realm of known reality.
Alyssa Spungen:
My body roiling, mimicking waves kissing the coastline around me. I find my name in the dirt, my cheek, my thigh, my innocence, my birth. Welcome hands beckon me, a faint hymn of surrender, surrender, surrender. The last of my attention I place here on the humus altar. Oh, what we would give if we had anything to give besides the hallowed hauntings of tenuous memories of something was here….
Lisa Marie Basile:
A girl on an island asks for her memories. A girl is given nothing. A digging, a wildness—yet nothing. The tides are violent. The girl is a violence of undoneness. The question is, can anything survive out here? A girl without a memory is just a girl, just a body, just an island. The remembering happens like a fever, like a small new flower.
Ute:
A sea so quiet as if it recognized them as members of this doomed family. She only wants to bury her sacrifice in the usual place and return home. Shovel by shovel she digs until she hits something hard. She wipes the last layers of earth away with her hands just to see – herself in mirror. In total horror, she stumbles backwards, falls down and faints. But under her coat something starts to move.
Beate Meiswinkel:
An old woman in a heavy cloak, digging with bare hands in black earth. She came to this secret isle in her rowing boat, in the middle of the night, unearthing something in the light of the full moon. A mysterious box the size of a child’s coffin. A box firmly closed by a rusty lock. The key is dangling from a velvet ribbon around her neck. What is hidden in the box? A witches heritage.
Lisa Wallerstein:
Crows rise suddenly from the dark cypress trees. Between the stems, a white shadow slips back to the jetty. It seems to be carrying a large box. How can a shadow move such a big casket? For a casket it is. A small figure appears, someone in a grey cloak. As the shadow heaves the casket into the boat, she stands on the jetty, and is heard sobbing: "My sweet girl, finally, I will bring you home.”
Debra Fillmore:
An ancient monster has woken up from it's centuries long slumber in the damp black earth. The caretaker of the light house on the island has arrived in an old wooden row boat to check on the light house. It is an island situated in the southern hemisphere. When the caretaker steps off the boat he takes notice of the ring of cypress trees, that he has seen many of times
Michelle Lairet:
Here lies the coffin of a gentle ferryman. It is only a coffin inasmuch as it is what an immortal being withdraws to in order to renew itself. To this island the undead captain slips away in a trance, his crew of souls left feasting and drunk while he is restored by a destination of destinations. Here he bathes at last. In nothing less than the core of the waters for which he was born to minister
Garry Barker:
What looked like a boat when boarded was nothing of the sort. It was a boat shaped portal. Across the opening that I had presumed was the entry into the boat’s cabin, was a pulsating energy field, that glowed intermittently with a faint blue haze and protruding from the centre, floating with on apparent support, was a solid gold hand, its fingers outstretched, as if waiting to grasp my own.
Tara Vanflower:
My skin sings as the air cuts like shards. Cypress bends to caress, the circle complete. The voice of unseen magic roars with the wavesong. The center is silent, untouched, still. The magnet of time, broken. The world falls away, a moment unlocked.
Claudia Lindhout:
A distant future. A rogue moon’s core. Once part of a colony, torn off-track by a black comet. The people almost died. A scientist gave the AGI full control. It said: “I’m the weaver. There will be no more night.” Now the sky is white. No one remembers. But the weaver still exists in the core.
