The Pole Shift

Sean rises

There was no drink. There was no one. He had not cared for things properly and now that his cellar of tin cans were eaten and his music destroyed,  he had nothing to turn to but himself. He had cast all asunder, the sudden friends gone, swift promise, departed. He understood his waste.  Sean felt fleeting regret. Then his mind raced to something else.  The chief loss,  the promise of the love of a beautiful woman that had gone. Weirdly, a very distant memory surfaced of his father bending down to say something to him:

                "A woman wants to be loved! Above everything!  Money, good looks!  Even a big chap, it's the feeling of being loved that matters! Boy, make sure you truly love." Sean had not understood properly, he had been twelve. Love was something you waited for until you knew for sure? It was just a word, if you didn't feel it, how could you do it? Sean whispered:

                "I want to kiss her pussy." Thinking that sexual gratification was perhaps love. He blushed at his spoken comment, paranoid that something might hear and that he had said it wrongly. All the shingle he had orbiting around him fell to the ground with various thuds.

                 He was hungry. He looked over to the smashed house. His island was just a slope of gravel now, there was nothing but waste and sea birds trying to start again. He walked up to the top, and stones followed him like eager mice. At the top, where the basalt met what was left of Mt. Dandenong's top soil, and where he had heaved the dead upon the eager sea below, he paused to remember. He suddenly wanted a peanut and jelly sandwich. A pre- Pole Shift flash back pounced on him, of living on a 600 meter hill where cyclist were pests, and quaint tea houses offered scones tea and jam.  he murmured:

                "I would touch her face,  I would give her scones tea and jam but I would look away when she wanted privacy." Sean raised his hands to his eyes, sand was gathering around his finger tips and he cast the silica away with thought. He looked to the horizon where Melbourne once rose. Now, a frigid ocean swirled and meant nothing. The stone mice that had followed him stopped too. The whispers came and he took from a little pocket his tiny gold wand. Immediately the stone about seemed to hold its breath as if waiting for a command but the gold wand caused them to collapse into the hill and Sean sat himself down on an enormous rock. A rock smoothed by the hands of people, from this Pole Shift age, to the last, and the one before that.

                "I'll find her. I'll let her know that I care."

                Sean stood up, the rock smoothed by hands of Aborigines rose and crowned his head. The mice like pebbles fleeted and darted and found their place. The very island heaved and reformed around Sean.

                Sean's Island was gone. In its place was Sean, Oceanus, The Giant. Rock legs unplugged themselves from their volcanic past, mineral arms rose and sand fingers touched his face, Sean rumbled:

                "I will find her."