INTRODUCTION CONTRIBUTORS ABOUT

a night of wistful aches

Sophie Lawson

It’s in the in-between moments that the yearning kicks in. It finds its way through the cracks when you no longer have the pounding noise of distraction to quell its voice.

Someone once told me that if a goodbye hurts, then it was time well spent.

Eighteen o-clock

By sunset the loiterers of the world dally by the banks of urban rivers. With no rush to get home, they afford themselves the experience of basking in the glow of a dying sun dipping below the horizon. Just beyond the native oasis of Karkarook Park, baby pink hues fuse into the lines of dotted clouds suspended in the sky. Two simultaneous strings of car lights flutter by, itching to escape the city whilst those with the gift of time slow down. The loiterers hold hands with their partners and raise their phones to the sky.

The circadian rhythm of nostalgia begins its cycle, spurred on by the gentle fall of sunlight. Like a nocturnal creature, nostalgia manifests itself as a silver shadow that hijacks your brain at its most vulnerable. It’s time for it to come out of its burrow.

What was once a polluted waterway riddled with cradled reeds and adorned with careless litter comes alive at the loss of the sun. A blanket of magic infuses the colours that I see as I stand here myself. On the banks I sit, listening to the soft lull of water lap against the stones. On the traditional Country of the Bunurong People, exists a rare vessel to the past. Karkarook means Sandy Place in the Boonwurrung languages. Here, indigenous vegetation flourishes, whilst the bustle of the Dingley bypass, and the rest of the modern world roars on. One toss of a stone, and circular ripples bubble outwards in front of me.

Silver nights and dark misty horizons pull me to a past

A memory that I cannot touch

Yet every fibre is alight

With the bats, the possums, and snakes

A yearning that you secretly wish

Would resurrect and infinitely last

Twenty-one o’clock

The reflective souls of the world with their skin scrubbed and moisturised nestle into their beds. They are disciplined, they turn off their phones and they light their candles.

In numerology, the number nine is associated with the divine completion of cycles. It’s a time for introspection, spiritual connection and solitude.

Some pray, some journal, some cry.

Some meditate, some stretch, and some lie there and simply ask why.

Two black swans, like magnetics swim towards each other in the lake. All that I can see is the graceful silhouette of a long-curved neck, and a budding tail sticking out. They circle each other repeatedly, in a melodic rhythm. Ripples emanate outwards, briefly disrupting the surface tension of the water, yet it remains soft, something only a swan could do. The water by the banks is unaffected, there is a distance between swan and human.

I am too far away.

By the lake I grip my shoulders, arms crossed over. They rest on my knees. What beauty I’m witnessing. These two swan-soulmates found each other, and dance on the water uninterrupted under the moonlight.

I once learnt that black swans would adopt abandoned eggs and lovingly raise them as part of their brood. Those lost can always find a home.  

As the two swans caress, it is as though my skin is also touched by the grace of a loving feathery touch.

In my nightly solitude here, I know I’m less alone.

Twenty-two o’clock

Once I heard that ten is a ‘perfect number’ in Pythagoreanism.

The Pythagoreans were followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. They sought to fathom the harmony of the cosmos, recognising nine heavenly bodies. Yet, they believed a tenth body – a Counter-Earth existed, perpetually hidden behind the sun.

It is the idea of the unknown that I find so gripping about this theoretical Counter-Earth. A place of balance? A place of darkness? An alternative reality? Like a locked door, the curiosity taunts me. I twirl a twig into the sand – make peace with the unknown.

Twenty-three o’clock

The real hush has begun. Back home the exhausted limp bodies of hard workers fall into their slumber quickly and painlessly. Yet I stay on the banks, entranced as the full moon lights the riverscape. It’s spherical and serene. She does not impose her shine like the sun. Instead, she wavers back, she cannot cast a warmth upon your skin like her brother the sun. She does not fight for your attention, she simply rests in the sky, never dipping by the horizon. She is there in the day, yet you don’t notice her.

I once found a message in a bottle at Karkarook Park lake. I wonder what it said. It was so beautiful in the moonlight, washing up upon the banks. Past and future collide, yet I am here in the present moment. Once this lake was an industrial sand mine. Many waterbirds now find refuge in one of the only city spots that left in its original state. It’s easy for me to sink and lament the boundaries beyond the park.

On a run many years ago, I discovered that on the secret wooden footbridge, nestled amongst maroon and forest green reeds lies a vantage point. Here, the surroundings of the modern world are out of sight. And all peripherals can soak in the parklands, free of any distraction.

This is what it looked like before everything changed. My street and my high school probably looked like this too.The roads I drive, the trains I take, all looked like this. Lush with native life. Lush with native beauty.

I close my eyes now, on the banks of the lake and I imagine that beyond the boundaries of the park dissolve, and the parklands go on and on. I’ve gone back hundreds of years.

And I realise, this pocket is all that is left, a true time capsule. My neck lowers and I fold into the ground.

Midnight

At the tick of a new day paradoxically it is still night. Glittering stars above me shift in their place. I lament the loss of stars under this choked Melbourne sky. Take me away, and the boundless cosmos commands the sky. Away from Melbourne, out further than the bounds of city roads. Somewhere where the sound of my own breath is the only ‘human’ noise to exist.

On my back on the sand I stargaze, something that is lost to a past before the area was industrialised. All those stars above me now are hidden by a veil of pollution.

Like the Counter-Earth hidden behind the veil of the sun, our own stars remain hidden by the artifice of ‘illumination’. These aches are deep, ones that dig into the skin. Something is lost here and can never return.

Midnight is wholly a time for closing a chapter and setting intentions for what is new.

I move to the west, by the two serpentine basins. Wetlands extend beyond the lake, and the coos of waterfowl echo around me. On the marshy boardwalk, I tilt my head back. I close my eyes and envision a white beam from my forehead ascending to the sky.

At midnight the spiritual energies around me heighten. A duality of myself exists, but only at this hour can I reach her. She is my higher self; she sees all but only communicates divinely.

By the end of the hour, the veil closes, and I am left to my own devices once more.  

She doesn’t communicate in words. Instead, through signs. So, what am I missing? What is she sending me that I accidentally ignored?

Three o’clock

The witching hour. A cold breath tickles my neck. I am no longer alone on the bank. The veil between this world and another is thinning. I itch with anxiety. Every ominous thought that intruded upon my consciousness throughout the day now has been infused with a capability for darkness. And not the beautiful kind. I fear change. I fear the loss of the world I once knew. I fear the morphing of my youth into old age.

Those asleep wake in a jolt from their nightmares. They look at their clock, still trapped between the realm of dreams and the realm of reality. It’s only three o’clock they realise with relief. Those apparitions that then felt so real dissipate in an instant, departing with haste to their veil of darkness.

I go off the path, away from the lake into the dense vegetation. On the cusp between human path and nature, a tube-like smooth entity slithers into the shrubbery. The snakes of Karkarook Park stalk the high reeds of the wetlands, itching to prey on the frogs and waterfowls.

At three o’clock they rustle. And I back away, back to the path.

Ghostly whispers taunt me

I feel them creeping down my spine

Am I wrong to cling so deeply to the past

Maybe to dwell in the past

Is to risk being preyed upon

As I am vulnerable to all the hurt

And regret that lingers in my ears

Four o’clock

At the tick of four, stability replaces the uneasy shivers of the witching hour. There is real beauty in the number four. It is strong, stable, and powerful. So much of our world is structured in fours:

Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. North, South, East, and West. Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. Fours.

Once at Karkarook Park I stumbled across an ant hill and saw their methodical line marching out. Breadcrumbs on their backs, they each took turns diving deep into their mound. I’ll never know what it looked like inside, but I know that ants are the masterminds of organisation.

Maybe I need a dose of looking down. Let a wave of introspection encompass me. What lingers down there?

Seven o’clock

The blackness of the sky becomes tinged with blue. Light graces the ground around me and the sun begins to rise in the east. Golden beams of warmth descend from the heavens and alight my skin. My eyes begin to squint as the sun envelopes my face. He’s back with a comforting hug, one that reminds me it’s a new day.

Dew-kissed leaves glisten

Under the rosy pinks

With one quick blink

You’ll miss it

The window between rugged night

And gentle day

Sunflowers open their petals

And reptiles hasten to sleep

Aurora rises

Runners emerge from their cars, shivering in their singlets as they walk over the shrubbery to the path. They patter along the path, with heaving breaths. Fear in their eyes as the human population arrives at the park. Prams roll onto the gravel pathways, crunching and grinding the stones with each revolution of their wheels. Bikes whoosh past, whisking a slipstream of air into a gust in my face whilst their bells chime just in time to avoid a collision.

The snakes sleep, lying dormant in the shrubs. They wait.

The piercing orange sun dominates the wistful moonlight. She lies back, still visible but no longer commanding the sky. The sun, destined to rise higher and higher into the sky takes place as the ruler of the heavens, for now.

And that’s my cue to walk away, shielding my eyes from the piercing light.