Michael Scott Hand

Category: Mondays

• 06122021

  Posted at 8:38 am by Michael, on December 6, 2021

  Life comes at you fast, like a pro wrestler, like a bull. There’s no time to step aside, there’s no alcove to hide in. It’s just you and life… mano-a-mano.

  It’s just you and life, a tsunami you can’t run away from. Don’t turn and run–it’s too late for that now–just stand and watch the wall of water approaching. Watch it crush everything away.

  But we still stand, immortal in our own way. Immortal until the point we are mortal. Dodging and feinting and ducking and dodging, feet glued to the spot.

  We fight ninjas. We fight mad dogs, bad dogs, not our dogs. We weather the tsunami and then there’s another. Then there’s another.

  A tornado whips through and around. This one stings your eyes and cuts you to pieces; but you’re still alive. Debris from every other disaster surrounds you and it is a crackling, flooded wasteland of downed wires and metal shavings.

  Snakes and shit circle around your feet. You are standing in ankle-deep, dirty water. This is life, this is your life and it’s coming at you fast, already and again. Another tsunami. Another.

  A news helicopter hovers above you, there is a camera looking down. A million people are watching you standing in the flood water. The vision is LIVE. They see that it’s too late for you to run and yet they watch, eyes glued to the screen.

  You can hear the helicopter. Whep-whep-whep-whep-whep. And on the horizon another wave is coming. You cannot tell if it is bigger or smaller than the last. You hope, at least, it will wash away the dirty water.

  You make the motion of rolling up your sleeves, but really your clothes are nothing than rags. No matter what you’re wearing, beneath those flimsy fabrics you’re still naked as the day you were born. And like a baby waiting to be born, you’re waiting once again.

  You’re waiting once again for the wave that will break you. The wave that will crush and destroy everything in its path. The wave that strands sea-creatures in takeaway restaurants and boutique clothing shops: the tsunami.

  But your sleeves are rolled up. Or your almost-sleeves. And your feet are glued to the ground. And this time, you’re not even trying to move. You’re beginning to understand this illusion to which you are bound–but only just beginning.

  Don’t move–just watch. Ball your hands into fists. Grit your teeth if you have to, because this is going to hurt. It’s just you and the tsunami now. Mano-a-mano.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 29112021

  Posted at 8:14 am by Michael, on November 29, 2021

  The pages of the calendar yield to me, another page torn free. Yet it is not to me they yield but to the ceaseless march of time.

  Pages. Pages. Glossy paper. Does anyone use a real calendar any more?

  Days become boxes and boxes become full of scribbled ink. Some days. Other boxes remain empty and, sometimes, those empty days are the best days of all.

  The end of the page draws near–the end of the month. What trials await our hero on the next page, in the next chapter?

  Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

  It is December. It is the last page. But not to worry, there’s a sequel already available in stores called 2022.

  Here, in Australia, the air becomes hot and dry. Trees creak and splinter in the heat. There is the smell of smoke, a haze in the air. The sun does not feel warm and comforting but like it has been, somehow, turned up too high.

  This blasted wasteland, ever-approaching. For when the new year begins and the new calendar is opened, we begin that march anew. That march towards today. That march towards December.

  Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Monday.

  The names of foreign holidays printed in tiny text. Days of Independence. Days with scribbled-in notes. Is it January already? Is it really 2022?

  Not yet, of course. Not yet. But we are marching there. And if it were a castle on a hill we would be able to see it now, perhaps decked out in festive lighting.

  A year ends and another begins and it is nothing but the turning of glossy pages. It is nothing but a cacophony of fireworks. A glass raised in a toast. Another rotation around the sun.

  Around the sun?

  Around the sun we spin and whirl and days skip by like hopscotch squares drawn in chalk. In time the rain will wash them away, but we will draw them again. Over and over. And we will hop across those squares. And we will keep on turning calendar pages.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 22112021

  Posted at 7:56 am by Michael, on November 22, 2021

  Time and the seasons spiral like a painted design on a cylinder, a double helix of history.

  These fleeting weekly words are the links between them, reaching between the chains: AGTC.

  Ancient and unlikely combinations synthesised by ionising radiation, raining down like scattered space rocks.

  Generously, the seas foam and chemicals reacting form bonds and age-old enmities that we find recorded in the scars of fossils.

  Tenacious are those that persist amongst these wretched waters and across these wretched lands.

  Conflict drives the evolution of an echo of the very first.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 15112021

  Posted at 7:45 am by Michael, on November 15, 2021

  What of the Old Gods?

  Those who slumber beneath mounds. Those whose ancient stone faces have been worn away by age.

  What of the Old Gods?

  Those whose names we have forgotten. Were they deleted from the pantheon, by some celestial democracy?

  What of the Old Gods?

  Those who we claim to still remember. Names and forms repurposed for brands and action figures.

  Does the power in the Old Gods depend on our belief in them? Does that obese oven, Moloch, yet hunger for a sacrifice in flames?

  Or… has he starved to death by now and, withered, powerless remain?

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 08112021

  Posted at 8:34 am by Michael, on November 8, 2021

  Hello again.

  Perhaps this is the first time we’ve spoken like this, but probably not. Sit down with me, here on the sand, that’s right. Look around: do you like this desert I have created?

  There are sand dunes all around us and that peculiar shade of twilight that hovers above the desert.

  Would you like some tea?

  I look up at the sky, perplexed, for although I can see the colour of it (and it is something more than seeing, I would even go so far as to say that I can feel this particular shade of blue) I do not know how to convey it to you in words. My sky, your sky, they are the same but different.

  Do you like this desert you have created?

  This type of conversation suits me, I must admit. I get to speak and you get to listen. I mean, you could get up and walk away I suppose, out across those dunes, but I doubt you would get very far. I doubt you would find anything. In fact, in time, I have a feeling you would find yourself back here, with me.

  Firelight flickers between us, casting us in shades of bronze. Above, there are pale stars in that twilight sky.

  Sip your tea now, there you go. Is it too strong? Too sweet? Is it not tea at all? It’s an idea at least, the idea of tea, the idea of a desert, the idea of a twilight sky.

  See what I have built here? See all these sloping dunes? It is nothing. It is only sand and sky. Oh and there is you and I, of course. A campfire. A tin pot and two cups for the tea.

  But there is nothing else; we are alone here. In fact, you are alone here, for what am I except some disembodied voice in your mind and perhaps not even that.

  Grand ideas stood here once. Cities and civilisations arose out of the sand. Bedouins trekked across these dunes without ever getting lost. But all that is gone now, I have destroyed it. Or time destroyed it, I forget which.

  There is so much buried beneath the sand.

  Why did we bury it, why did I? The desert is beautiful, no doubt. But it is empty.

  Now the desert waits.

  Twilight fades and the sky begins to fill with stars and I offer you more tea. And the dunes turn to silver as the cold face of the moon peers above the horizon. Hello moon.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 01112021

  Posted at 8:04 am by Michael, on November 1, 2021

  Why must we retread the paths of old in nightdreams?

  Again and again things happen to us in dreams that once happened to us in life. Of course the shapes might be different; there will be walls where there were no walls and doors where there were no doors.

  Old traumas play again and again; forgotten monsters arise, dripping, from the muck.

  And the structures of our memory collide with one another, morphing and reforming into hybrid places. One school becomes every school, every school becomes your living room, your living room becomes a dark pit of despair.

  If there is a light it is the light of morning sneaking in from under the blinds. If there is a way out it is by following the sound of your alarm clock.

  Alarm clock; morning; awake; alive.

  Sit up in bed and be thankful. Let the dreams fall away like the bed covers.

  Dreams evaporate like drops of water on hot cement. That is the rule–they cannot follow you. Only a certain amount of a dream is allowed into the “real world” and it is not very much.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 25102021

  Posted at 9:01 am by Michael, on October 25, 2021

  How is it the year 2021?

  With each moment that passes–each infinitesimal fraction of a second–time, human time, recorded time, slides effortlessly along on greased rails.

  There is nothing that can stop human time. There is no pause button. There is no rewind. There is only the surety, baked into the bread that time keeps going; days keep coming, days keep falling.

  One might grow afraid that the sun might not rise tomorrow, or all the water instantly evaporates, or somebody will start a fire that consumes the entire earth.

  But we do not question time for it is so much bigger than us. We are the lumpy road and time is the steamroller that flattens us all into history. And that history becomes pages, like in a book. Inexact descriptions about the way things were; the way things will never be again.

  Were time to stop would we be frozen in place, like mannequins? Would it be a localised time-stopping event? Would the earth continue to spin or would it halt, suddenly on its axis? Pause the Earth’s rotation and tidal waves would destroy entire nations. Or would the water simply freeze as well? Would the oceans turn to ice?

  This is what I mean by human time. It is an idea so essential to us that we do not think about it. Or at least we try. It can be depressing–this idea of time as a steamroller that first flattens and then distances all things that occur to us on this scale. Memories linger, but become wobbly in the haze of the horizon.

  Looking back we see all human knowledge, all memories and events, all things global and personal and big and small get flattened into that same stuff. That endless road that we know as history. It is gone now, it is past now. It is fading.

  And if we continue to look back–I mean, if that’s all we do–we can become transfixed by this: for the past is a long, flat road that lead us here. And perhaps, if we could follow it back we might be able to answer some important questions: how did I get like this? How did we get like this?

  For where does that long, straight road begin? With your own mewling birth? With the birth of your parents? With the birth of a Neanderthal? With the birth of a fish?

  Is this the only road of time or are there many? Is there, perhaps, some great manufacturing facility at the beginning of all time that set forth dozens of steamrollers in dozens of different directions and the timeline we occupy is but one?

  Such is the way one can be drawn into the past. It is not without its fascinations. Beyond that hazy horizon of memory lie truths we will probably never understand; both personal and profound.

  But perhaps looking backwards is not always the answer. What if we turn that longing, nostalgic gaze in the opposite direction… towards the road yet to be travelled: towards the future?

  There it is we find the greatest uncertainty–and yes, perhaps fear. But there is also a different type of excitement to be found in the horizon that approaches, the horizon that does not grow ever more distant with the passing of time but, in fact, draws closer.

  We know the past–not perfectly and not all of it–but we remember. We have records. We have books and lists and striations in rock that tell us things about where we have been. But we do not yet have a road-map for where we are going.

  There a great many mystical, magical things on the approaching horizon; a great many wonderful things.

  Look forward.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 18102021

  Posted at 8:53 am by Michael, on October 18, 2021

  It’s powerful to think that seeing the world from above necessitates some fundamental change in the psyche of those who see it.

  They call it the Overview Effect and many astronauts speak of it: the sudden realisation that this vulnerable, sunlit blue sphere hanging in the void is of unique and supreme importance.

  In this moment of overwhelming clarity all war seems pointless and the importance of protecting the natural world becomes self-evident.

  (These are realisations, by the way, that are possible to reach without a journey into low-Earth orbit)

  Visiting “space” is also said to have appreciable positive impacts on mental health. Not unlike the use of hallucinogens to activate a “higher state of consciousness”, floating–very literally–in a “higher state” above the Earth has been reported to produce a pronounced reduction in the symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.

  And yet, as passenger crafts begin to shoot up through the atmosphere and allow more and more people this unique experience–this unique view–I do not feel the hope this is supposed to engender.

  For as the earth becomes a glinting jewel in the light of the sun; and as that light is reflected in the heart of the onlooker (who is good), I fear the void that surrounds our planet is likewise mirrored in the hearts of humanity.

  In that void, pure nihilism, a nothingness that reaches to infinity. An emptiness of rocks. A different sort of clarity.

  And the Earth itself, suspended against that backdrop of black velvet, becomes the only thing of value–the only thing left to “be attained”.

  The gem is not without its flaws, but look at the way it shimmers. It is the only one in existence, the only one ever found. And it is for all of us. It is all of us. It is mother and father and everything we cling to.

  All memories, all histories, all creatures and creations, all blessings and curses and victories and mysteries, all comes from this sphere, this singular, spinning gemstone.

  What a treasure to behold. To witness. To comprehend these ideas–even in part–is in essence what the Overview Effect is about.

  And it belongs to all of us.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 11102021

  Posted at 8:27 am by Michael, on October 11, 2021

  Good Morning Michael,
  Who are you?
  Can you tell us a little something about the things that you do?

  What’s your story about?
  What type of things do you write?
  Are you familiar with deception as a fictive device?

  Gigantic rents in the sky,
  A speck of sand in your eye,
  I’m like a creature that has wings and yet refuses to fly.

  Well that’s nice,
  But what do you know about current publishing trends?
  Do you start work on a sequel as soon as one story ends?

  I’m like a murder scene played backwards until nobody dies,
  Gotta keep this shit tight,
  Like a CD track at night,
  Played in a car with engine idling that’s stopped at traffic lights.

  Well you’re certainly creative, so there’s no problem there,
  But you’ve still given us no reason for the reader to care…

  Oh, I am nothing to you,
  But you are something to me,
  For I dwell in a space too far for even Hubble to see,
  And your existence is the stars that light up my night sky,
  Without the stars I’d be alone and have no reason to try.

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• 04102021

  Posted at 9:05 am by Michael, on October 4, 2021

  There is a window in a small room.

  You can’t see through the window because the light from the doorway is reflecting from it.

  As you step inside the small room and close the door behind you the path of the light is cut off and the window grows dark as the reflection dies.

  Now, in the darkness of the window you can see something but you cannot tell what. It is like… a flurry of shapes. Is it snowing outside?

  Are you cold?

  It is dark inside the small room and there is a window on the far wall that you still can’t see through except for indiscernible shapes that tumble through the darkness like static on a television set.

  You haven’t forgotten the light of the corridor behind you. The door isn’t locked. You can open it if you want, turning that window into a mirror that reflects the light. You can forget about the window altogether. You can leave the small room.

  Not today. Not today.

  You take a step towards the window. Nothing becomes any clearer. Looking at the window is like looking into a tumble-dryer. Maybe it is snowing.

  Are you cold?

  You are halfway between the door and the window. The corridor behind you is light. A small line of that light is still visible beneath the door. You can turn back if you want. You can forget about this small room and the window (you can’t).

  Another step is all it will take (the room is small, after all). Another step and you’ll be able to look through the window.

  You are standing at the window. You are trying to focus your eyes beyond the pane of glass. Even here it seems some lingering trace of the light from the corridor creates an optical illusion that makes it hard for you to focus; for a moment all you can see in the window is your own shadow.

  Your own shadow filled with a flurry of snowflakes; empty static; crystals.

  Beyond: darkness. And… street lamps.

  The street lamps glow, each one bearing a halo. It is snowing on the street outside. There is nobody in sight. There is nobody here except you. It is quiet.

  Are you cold?

  Posted in Mondays | 0 Comments

• Search for:

• Recent Posts

  • 06122021
  • 29112021
  • Scraggly Birds
  • 22112021
  • 15112021

• Categories

  • Drawings (72)
  • Mondays (71)
  • Poems (48)
  • Fragments (42)
  • Philosophy (29)
  • Photographs (20)
  • Housekeeping (12)
  • Stories (12)
  • Personal (7)
  • Films (4)