Under the Moon
Tales from two islands
Borgarnes/Sydney 2016
text
Mitchell Jordan pictures
Kuba Urbaniak Maugo Dudek
All the pictures were taken during long Icelandic winter nights in the small town of Borgarnes. All text was written in the warm Australian summer days in the big city of Sydney.
W
e live upside-down, mirror lives. While one sleeps and dreams,
the other dreams and creates, melding the solitude of snow and sun
11 hours ahead or behind, more than 28 hours away into something that can outstay time.
4/5
A
lready, I am tired of this talk of running away. It sounds easy to leave
somewhere or someone, but it is not. Staying in motion is exhausting;
devising a plan that accounts for rabbit holes and dead-ends is draining. It must be so much easier to remain put, faithful as a grandfather clock ticking with certainty; the charm of precision. Instead, I am forced to play the bit part of the squeaking cuckoo who has decided the time is not only right, but necessary, to smash through the glass and fly away. And I will. Just not now. In a few minutes. Or more. How lucky it is for someone as poor as me that time is not only free, but in abundance.
6/7
W
rapped in a blanket of stars, we owned the night and roamed through the
moon-lit
playground
like
whispers
of
the
wind
while,
inside
houses,
television
sets rested, beds were filled and even insomniacs found it possible to close their eyes. In a flash of fury, we moved out of the rain, under the moon and through bushes without breaking branches or leaving footsteps in the mud. We were warriors of the night; we were the night’s breath. Morning was always difficult for me. You left to a land I did not know while the sun
tickled
its
way
through
my
curtains,
gentle
as
a
harp,
dissolving
your
presence into powder. Without you I felt empty as a tomb, my body mummified, chained to the floor. There was nobody to guide me; my voice had been stolen. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ you said. ‘The sun will eat you up fast as acid; you won’t even be a shadow. I will take you to a place where you never face the blinding light again.’ Those were the words you told me and I believed them. I still believe them. Here, we have retreated like two turtles hiding inside their shells. The hunters’ spears cannot reach us here. Wrapped in the darkness, in the jar which only we can open, the world spins no longer. Everything is still behind the opaque glass ;we can see out, but no one can see in.
8/9
'I
don’t know why everybody leaves. Everybody leaves me!
'
s/he sighed.
I watched his/her eyes twist and contort like overrun vines intent on strangling themselves. Couldn't s/he see what was standing in front of her/him: the steadfast donkey who dared not complain, the fool that braved the storm? 'I won't leave you. I will never leave you,' I promised, my voice rising out of the dank pond like a waking sea monster. I looked at my best and only friend, but s/he did not return my gaze. His/her silence was a bloody massacre. I could scrub for centuries but it would always be there: the indelible stain of my insignificance. I had staked my future, my life, on someone who saw me only as a pincushion; something that felt good to stick hard, spiteful things into. And I had come to enjoy the pain so much that the constant pinpricks almost screamed in protest at the thought of ever closing, healing.
10/11
W
hat headache must be endured tonight? A thousand glassy stars hammering
like baby teeth: too sharp, not yet blunted by indifference. There is nothing to
digest but a bottle of shark’s rancid breath (all they do is mate, eat and kill – not always in that order). For my punishment, I will take four walls of sickly white – stare hard enough and all you are looking at is delusion. The eyes do not lie when there is nothing to see. Your eyes save you … And my eyes have seen enough.
12/13
I
, I, I-‌
I am always in the singular. I am,-. I will,-. I must go-‌
14/15
A
s our eyes stared down the hallway of hidden treasures, we strug-
gled to distinguish reality from the shadows of our illusions. Fear and excitement live together as one: both are equal exaggerations of the ordinary.
16/17
A
s a child, the world was so bright that I could not stop blinking, pupils learning
to adjust to a backdrop so beautiful it hurt. As a child, there were always new
colours to discover, hidden down wells and inside wardrobes. Colours sprang from drainpipes like dragons guarding ancient treasure; I hear the hiss of kingly purple (don’t touch with your dirty hands) and the sting of silver’s scalding disapproval. Most of us create our own shade, but some of us are strong enough, unique enough to be a colour. I was (I am) olive green, pond water, but I know someone who was red, real red; the red of blooded hearts and thorned roses, deep enough to drown inside. Red was a good colour to discover at school, where the walls, teachers and playground were grey, drained of life and they only want you to draw rainbows and puppies.
18/19
S
leep brings you all the sentences you want – all those you have spent wide-eyed
days tracking like a detective dusting over every surface for fingerprints or a stray hair. Only here in these strung-out seconds do they float towards you, slow as jellyfish that could disintegrate or disappear the moment you reach for a pen; but you will not do that now because you are sleep's creature, its captive prisoner, soon to dissolve into nothing with the words you hold weaving their way through you.
20/21
audiobook: Soundcloud- TalesFromTwoIslands https://soundcloud.com/talesfromtwoislands/sets/under-the-moon
22/23
a book by:
Mitchell Jordan
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side mitchell.jordan@yahoo.com.au
Maugo Dudek
Jellyfish niebawem@gmail.com
Kuba Urbaniak
Eternal Dreamer gramophonee@gmail.com
other platforms: www.h-art-workers.tumblr.com www.lofishadows.tumblr.com www.fluxusdesigntribe.com www.maugodudek.com
First Edition Book design: Kuba Urbaniak Text editor: Katarzyna "Ophelia" Koćma Published in Borgarnes, Iceland and Sydney, Australia in 2016. https://issuu.com/twoislands/docs/tales_from_two_islands Copyright © 2016 by Kuba Urbaniak All rights reserved.
24/25
nooM eht rednU 6102