Jul 11

Jul 11 Icelnd

By Michael H. Kew

Lipogram: A text that excludes one or more letters of the alphabet. The ingenuity demanded by the restriction clearly varies in proportion to the frequency of the letter or letters excluded. —Harry Mathews, Oulipo Compendium

{The following is a lipogram; a is our one absent letter.}

SIGLUFJÖRÐUR—WINTER SOLSTICE, PSEUDO-SUNRISE—forthwith there will be no cockcrow nor common morn. No brekkie. Not even brunch of fermented chondrichthyes.

With my old longtime illustrious shutterbug friend Chris (“Burkie”), both of us slip-sliding on his preferred silent suite of frozen ponds/inky echoes. Required to help me sketch sublime photos, he promises, of high flowery northern lights over chutes plunging from obscure icebergs—our fuzzed nitrogen-rich glimmers of intense endlessness.

“Let’s hug the universe!” he yells, jogging in tight circles, grinning his friendly mischievous cuddly grin. “Seize the night!”

Wistfully I hold one of his numerous iPhone 12s. I’d hoped we would use two of his newest most-expensive mirrorless Sony models but he sternly refused, citing security, which to me seemed preposterous.

But look—beyond the bergs, weird silhouettes lurk mesmerizingly greeny-blue, mixed with purply-pink swirls sweeping the entire fjord. Oddly my phone screen shows colorful (but blurry) shots depicting this cosmic web—of comets, of splotchy orbs.

Chris is beside himself. Eden.

“Wow, it looks like Hubble’s Cosmic Reef!” he shouts. “This one here—is it Mercury? Venus? Jupiter? Neptune? Pluto?”

“Doubtful,” I counter. “Blots of psychedelic poop.”

He howls before his oblique jogging resumes. His glee is infectious. His destiny here is imminent. His oily plump cheeks glisten from the dim hue of our modern hyperconnective Cupertino-Shenzen devices.

Like rocketeers, for true effect, one of our spirits must inch closer to the rippling whirling light. Either me or him.

“Kew! Did you know Scott Kelly with Kjell Lindgren recently grew red lettuce on the ISS? Peppers, too! Moony orbiting crops, dude!”

“Selenologic produce? How delicious! Non-GMO, I reckon.”

Cosmic lettuce theories now quickly nixed by the brisk mock shutter click-click-click of Chris’s 12. Fleetingly he’s moored his big booted feet; his numbed fingers feverishly compose, focus, execute. Expertly. Coolly. This virtuosic guru of the lens never fizzles nor flops, not even when Chris is cold or lonesome on top of the world. Perfection forms the bedrock of his studio empire down in SLO.

He stops shooting to suggest I view his screen of eos delights. The essence of his work is shocking, humbling, wholly inspiring. The northern lights defined: notoriously tough to reconstruct scenes seen by most eyes of wight. Not Burkie’s. His sense my musings by ogling directly into mine.

Yes—he’s done it.

Suddenly his 12 bursts into smoke. His skull’s two brown oculi explode crosswise like goopy little whizzing flesh rockets which turn purple then turquoise while his densely clothed body dissolves, twisting into something ghostly resembling old night reveries sunken by the side of my synthetic green 1990s college bong long before he—it?— is now slowly rising then flying off out over the immense icefield ostensibly en route to our twinkling photobergs, this wild new specterous blur brightly reflected on lonely ice. The glorious northern lights now nestle my old friend, yes, this colorful disk ever yonder, frolicking like dolphins, ether to ether, blended perfectly into this esoteric cosmic kingdom where he’d long, so long, wife or no, sons or no, empire or no, wished to be.

(Now time for lunch.)

{Excerpted from Purplēdeneye, formulaic dream poesy stew per Spruce Coast Press available from Amazon; signed copies from here.}