Pansaers is cold. Colder than anywhere we’ve been so far. The fog is gone at least, revealing the wasteland around us. We’ve huddled in the building remains, and the crew have scraped together some meals out of what supplies they were mindful enough to bring off The Kandinsky collapsed. All the singing, dancing, and street theatre has gone. They are not even making any paintings. The crew stand around a jumble of bones like they have excavated a dinosaur. Where have all of the insides gone?
We haven’t complained to them. All of us are still in shock at having to deal with reality. I haven’t made a normal cup of tea for four months and now we don’t even have hot water. What if we are stuck ? I don’t know if there are emergency services. It’s never cropped up before.
I thought about a show to lighten everyone’s mood, but the old surface emotions of hunger, tiredness, and thirst weighed me. The Butter Mouse is back to a piece of cloth. She lies on my lap. Her eyes are plastic ping pong balls, the felt too thick and brown. I never noticed that the third wire whisker had a corkscrew style twist to it. I can’t remember our old inanimate routine. I know the beats, the lines, the pauses for jokes. But before, in the middle of a routine, there was something I referred to as the ‘pop’ moment. When the Butter Mouse became such a part of me, I forgot she was there.
I’ve been thinking about the first settlers here, and how they failed. I don’t know much about them, but there was at least fifty of the. And they achieve something. The buildings around us are testament to that. I cannot comprehend taking everything through that tiny cave entrance, or scavenge materials out of the ground. All without the power of the imagination. When there would be skyscrapers nearby within five years, built without a single human hand lifting a brick.
What if it wasn’t due to a lack of imagination? What if they tried to set up something here, and it failed? What if imagination ends here? I will never call them frauds again. This is nothing to do with their spirit, but their location.
No photo this week. Update to follow when possible.