NO KIDDFUKKER HERE

THE HOLE IN THE SKY

It’s hard to say when it was first noticed. At first it was just a black streak on the blue sky. Like a jet trail only an oily black except it didn’t move with the wind. It just hung there, a stain on the sky, and the clouds and life seemed to roll on by. Some people speculated about the nature of the phenomena, if you could call it that, I know in the scheme of my life it didn’t rate a damn. In The Mercury some quack Scandinavian meteorologist was saying it was a sort of aurora, like they get up in Bicheno. Personally I have an aversion to anything that doesn’t bring me any sort of gain so like everyone else I caught the bus to Uni and got on with my life. We ignored it but it didn’t go away. Soon it became obvious that it was spreading, the dark smudge on the sky was growing like an oil spill. It didn’t so much as occupy space in the sky, rather the blue seemed to evaporate somehow, the sky just seemed to lose its substance and in its place was nothing. The nightly news had been full of the growing global warming emergency for decades. We tried to care we really did, recycled our plastic bags and agonised about should plastic coated cardboard go in the paper or plastic bin. But it wasn’t something you could talk about, not seriously. Most people looked annoyed when you mentioned that the farming of palm oil was leading to deforestation in Borneo and the extinction of Orang-utans. People started saying they could see things in the black patch. How could that be we wondered, and then they even started calling it a hole, the hole in the sky. But war was raging in Iraq again, this time a bunch of Islamic jihadi extremists had declared an Islamic state across parts of Iraq and Syria. A whole bunch of young Aussies had flown over there to join the insurgents and fight, burnt their passports and everything, and it was creating a shit-storm with our government who were none too pleased. The hole seemed to suck everything into it, clouds, rain, even the weak Tassie sunlight. Some even said they had seen birds disappear into it, they didn’t come out. For my part I put my ear plugs in and tried to ignore the gossiping classes, same as usual. Of course it stressed me out. It has to be said that this was, despite all Australian complacency, seriously freaking people out now. A fair go for all in Australia, the hole had had its fair go, now it was time for a bashing. And then there was more neo-liberal war mongering to tune out. But how do you fight a hole? One day I took my ear plugs out and I realised I could hear something. It was a low bass rumble that ebbed like waves crashing at the seashore. Only it was more like a static hiss, but constant, always there. I opened my door reluctantly and stepped outside into the preternatural sunlight. The hole sucked light into itself, it gave the day an eerie twilight effect even at noon. It reminded me of tropical storms in Queensland that roll in so fast with thunderheads so black they were like the night sky rolling in. Only in my neighbourhood there was no hush of birds silent before a deluge, there was only the sound of my elderly neighbours hoarding canned goods. And the screech of tyres as teenagers in stolen cars took advantage of the pandemonium to have some fun without getting caught by the cops. The cops had just realised they were in for some serious shit. The hole wasn’t like the night sky, as I looked up at it I could see that it was the night sky. The atmosphere had vanished for whatever reason, and through the hole was the black of space and all the stars twinkling just like always. But never, not before or ever since apes first walked on earth has a homosapien looked up and seen the galaxy in the light of day. I heard the sound more clearly outside, it was like wind roaring as a plane takes off. Stripped of the ozone layer, the winds of inner space were lashing our atmosphere just kilometres above my head. It was getting hard to breath, the air seemed thin somehow. I went back inside; it seemed easier to breathe with the door shut. Switching on the news I saw I was right about the air. Something had gone down at Salamanca market the cops had the whole site cordoned off by a line of AFP troops. But the word from witnesses was that one of these interstellar winds above the hole had sucked all the oxygen out of the air over the docks and Salamanca. With the market packed with people shopping like it was the end of the world, sitting at Knopwoods drinking spirits, and a cruise ship docked from Europe, it must have been quite a scene. The shaky hand held TV camera broadcast the witness live, his face is ashen, behind him the white tents of Salamanca market look spattered with dark mud, only redder so it makes me think of autumn. And then I remember the Hobart Zombie march was next weekend, well they say life imitates art, but there is no one coming out of Salamanca dead or alive. I haven’t been to Uni for a week now. I’ve pulled my couch over to the window so I can lay on it and look up out the window at the sky, what’s left of it, because the air is thinner now even inside and I don’t have the energy to stand up anymore. I pull the blankets over me and it’s just like I remember being in bed on rainy days as a child. I know there’s looting going on at the shopping centre and I can hear gunfire on the main road as this place goes Mad Max but I don’t think any looters will come through here. It’s mainly older people around here and they are waiting to die anyway, I haven’t seen a light come on in the house opposite for three nights and the blinds haven’t been drawn. The wind has not stopped for days and now and again a branch breaks and is swept up and into the swirling vortex under the hole. It’s like being inside a tornado; the wind which comes from nowhere sucks branches and sometimes whole trees up into the night. But no matter how much trash and roofing iron it takes the hole is not filled and in fact it’s not really a hole anymore. It’s as if a giant has peeled back a whole area of the sky, and through it Ragnorak comes. I realise I haven’t phoned my mother but I don’t get up to find my mobile. I think about the miracle of creation, of the first life crawling out of the sea hundreds of millions of years ago. Aishia, you are my essence, my mother, my love, my heart. My soul is filled with light, my heart breaks; I cry tears of joy, breathless. Your velvet embrace is my mothers’ love healing my every woe. You pulled me from the womb of the sea onto the shore of the dawn of creation. Thanks to you I can see across the millennia of days, I see the giant monsters of prehistory, I walk with first man. I am the hunter on the plains spearing wombats the size of army tanks. I see the ice grow and recede. I am my forefathers aboard a wooden ship on the high seas, the old gods speak to me; they tell me to fight for new lands and take what I want. I see famine and plague rage across the earth and across the ages. I am my bloodline back to the dawn of time. I look into the fire and there I see the line of my people back to Valhalla. I am the flesh and blood of stars. I am the alpha and omega of the rainbow in the dust cloud after the birth of time. There is a hole in the sky.