The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy
Page 30
But nobody will be watching. Nobody will be recording, no recording angel.
And then the ice will begin to develop, slowly at first, surprisingly, although it will have been known that something would happen, something would develop. It was known, but it was gone ahead with as an experiment, to see what happened. But now the notion of experiment has been dispensed with because the experiment seems to have taken charge. The experiment has decided that this is not an experiment; it is real, it is real life.
This is what all the experiments were leading to.
This is the final chapter.
But as the cold deepens, there will be no one to take notes on it, to observe its sensory details, to photograph it, to make sense of it. Even without this documentation, this contemplation which formerly may have seemed necessary, the phenomenon will still occur. The phenomenon will be its own artform. Ice will come over everything at an accelerating rate, as if there’s no tomorrow. It might say, about itself:
like there’s no tomorrow
∴ there will be no tomorrow
At Moa Point, I shed some tears. I know it’s pathetic, but I can’t help it. I let the last page of The Ice Shelf be taken by the breeze. At first the page tumbles over the gravel, desultory, aimless. Then it pitches suddenly over the drop and lands on the rocks below. I think it’s going to get sodden and break down in a rock pool, and that would be a fitting end. But there’s a gust. The wind isn’t strong now, it’s light, but there are stray puffs coming at odd angles and one of these, a small blast from below, whisks the page up and up. And after a couple of dips back down to the rocks, to the water, it lifts up like a kite and climbs higher and higher. It’s airborne, it’s given itself to the weight of air, to the superior air, and it sails up and out over the sea to join the lonely gulls and the clouds.
It must be seven, by the light. A little jet wobbles up into the high wind above the straits, the plane to Christchurch, the plane to Antarctica.
It is the end of thankfulness. It is the end of love. The page is now a dot high in the sky, among birds. The page and the birds cascade further up and out, and I watch them until they are gone and it is the end of creation.
Links
Blog: janonice.com
Twitter: @janiceawriter
Friend me on Facebook: facebook.com/janiceawriter
Acknowledgements
I am immensely grateful to the people who saw this book along its path. Thank you to the wonderful team at Victoria University Press—Fergus Barrowman for shelf life, Ashleigh Young for deep-thinking and pitch-perfect editing, Kirsten McDougall for her ‘Get in behind’; to my colleague Ant Sang for bringing Janice and her fridge to life; to all at the International Institute of Modern Letters—Clare Moleta, Chris Price, Damien Wilkins, Emily Perkins, Katie Hardwick-Smith and Ken Duncum—for a marvellous year and an unexpected final draft; to the University of Auckland and the Michael King Centre, especially the tireless Karren Beanland and Tania Stewart for fellowshipping quite a chunk of this book; to Creative New Zealand for part-financing these two fellowships; to my agent Lyn Tranter who went to great and insightful lengths; to Bill Manhire for advice about clothes and flights; to my colleagues and students at Manukau Institute of Technology who inspire me every day; to Deborah Ross of my Honolulu book group who laughed at the early days of Janice; to John Newton for advice and encouragement; to my beloved children, Temuera Sullivan and Eileen Kennedy, for being there, and being hilarious. To John Kennedy Toole for writing a novel about a lost soul with a hotdog cart; to Mary Shelley, of course, for making the Frankensteins; finally, this book is dedicated to Kathy Phillips of Honolulu.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements