What can we admit? That words matter, yes: the how-to
instructions sprayed pixel by pixel onto this now yellowing page. That power
tools require power. That a world that never sleeps means the world never gets
to rest. Now we can admit that digging into the earth for cast-off remnants of
the sun – when the sun itself continues to shine – well, tunnel, mine, burrow,
cave, treasure, riches – they all belong, and return, to the sun.
On the taiga, in the lee of the west hills, Karp and his
family prepared. Each morning they prayed for the hideous torture death of the
anti-Christ. Dmitry might not be there. He may have been gone for some days,
barefoot in the frost, hunting with snares for rabbit and weasel. He might
return tonight. The forest might provide. Or not. Time isn’t an issue where
there are no clocks. It may as well be a series of tableaux, like turning pages
in an art-history book on the Middle Ages, before perspective was permitted,
before the separation of onlooker and the viewed was understood.
The geologists were dowsing for oil, or gold, or some
precious metal like uranium. They always are. Lewis and Clark’s famous
expedition paved the way for the looting. Darwin’s Beagle spawned evolution and
the meticulous cataloging of flora and fauna. Who bankrolled Columbus and the
litany of Spanish and Italian explorers? It’s what they do. For us. So when
they stumbled onto Karp’s little encampment, furrowed dirt passing for a
garden, birch-bark hovel little more than something Brer’ Rabbit might have
dug, and they took pictures and brought presents and television and perhaps maladies so
that 3 of the 4 siblings died, and Karp died, leaving only Agafia to tend her
garden, she remained unafraid. After all, what could hurt her? 40 years of
Siberian cold? Starvation, that wicked hunter who clambers up inside skulls
found no purchase – she had never eaten a feast, so he had no images to taunt
her with – he had no claim. Loneliness? The last remaining hermit – no. She
lived further removed than any human, except the scientists on Antarctica, and
they had each other and satellite connections.
Let the explorers depart and search for their eye’s content,
something from the earth no doubt, some mineral or gem or liquid, condensed by
eons of pressure, something that allows the onlooker to be transported into
some place where they can escape from having to search the most challenging
terrain.
