Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner

Author:Isabel Waidner [Waidner, Isabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

7.

THOSE BABIES CARRY BOMBS!

I could handle a spaceship when it still meant something. But since it’s back to back spaceships, files of spaceships filling my entire horizon, left to right, top to bottom, like a tile screensaver or a bedsheet graphic; since the universe has been made up of spaceships, spaceships as elementary, cosmic building blocks; since spaceships and political lies, built on political lies, built on political lies, are literally all there is left, it’s becoming increasingly hard to register spaceships as spaceships anymore.

It’s one thing when a spaceship appears in a Renaissance painting, like The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, egg and oil on canvas, 1486, by Crivelli, which depicts a classic flying saucer, bordered by small balls of clouds, shooting a laser-beam through the outer walls of a building and into the head of a kneeling virgin. Or The Baptism of Christ, 1710, Aert de Gelder painting a classic disc-shaped flying object targeting Jesus and friends, with four diffuse rays of light. Or the 1350 fresco, Crucifixion of Christ, by Anonymous, currently displayed in a cathedral in contemporary Kosovo, presenting what for all intents and purposes looks like a spaceship with a human inside, flying across the titular scene. A cone lying on its side, the ship flies to the right of the fresco, peak forwards. Its warped rump’s got spikes coming off of it, like a medieval morning star, or cartoon rays. The pilot is in a state of undress, flying forwards, looking back, who are they? Cruising the Kosovan skies circa 1350, blindly. If any of this happens, it makes you look twice, three times even. Ancient Egyptian, Aztec and Mayan civilisations are all said to have had their own reciprocal relationships with alien lifeforms, landing pads in the jungle three-thousand years old, and if you have any curiosity or sense of wonder, if you’re alive, if there’s somebody home, you pay attention, you go wow, WOW, you want to get to the bottom of that, or on top of it. If a UFO infiltrated your ocean vista you’d want to know, not just believe.

Being startled out of complacency by a spaceship is one thing. Breathing spaceships like air, quite another.

TAP-TAP! The peak of the ship with the rays coming out of its rear taps gently against my third-floor window. Again, TAP-TAP! ‘Some real Fox Mulder shit,’ Sophia Al-Maria once wrote, referring to someone having witnessed a spinning pyramid as big as a two-storey house in the sky.

It’s been a week since the trial and finally Rodney makes an appearance. They leave their spaceship outside, suspended, and climb into my flat through the window. During the last 670-odd years they’ve updated their wardrobe—they’re in their usual trackies, three or four chains round their neck. They’ve always been browner than their Kosovan likeness.

‘Hi,’ they say.

‘Hi,’ I say, suddenly shy.

Meanwhile, Chachki is dealing with their own complex feelings. They barely manage to introduce us, Rodney, Sterling, Sterling, Rodney.

‘Ok, Ki?’ They don’t look themselves.

Turns out Chachki’s got a problem,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.