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Monday, January 28, 2008

~ preserved in amethyst

I’ve been experiencing a hiccup with Ambergris, the play I’m writing set on an island off the Queensland coast. [You could call it Almost-Stradbroke.] The problem involves the disappearance of a girl, Lily, about seven years old, who ventures off with some hay to feed a horse and never returns. The play is set three years later, and the issue of the girl’s disappearance is important, but not central.

I’ve hammered out most of the plot, but what happens to the girl has been a sticking point. I haven’t been able to work out an appropriate fate. It can’t be too boring. And it can’t be too weird. [I’ve resolved myself to making this play a little less bizarre than my previous work].

There’s a dog named ‘Chunk’ who was with Lily when she disappeared. He knows something; he keeps returning to a certain place, but no one can figure out why. I also want to suggest, only vaguely, that the girl was ‘taken’ by the island. [with no similarity whatsoever to ‘Lost’] She is innocent, a child of nature. You know what I mean. Fodder for The Green Man.

Anyway, I’m getting close now. I’m thinking about the preservation of corpses.

I was at the Melbourne Museum yesterday with Polly and Lynne, attending The Bee Circus – a weird composite of bee information seminar and circus skills exhibition, performed and devised by kids from circus school. [Polly loved it.]

If I am to preserve Lily, I must decide how. At the Museum there was a replica of some corpses from Pompeii, but that’s far too violent a death. There was a mummy too, but that’s artificial – although the natron is a possibility. [Natron is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride mined by the Egyptians in the Natron Valley. Just as salt sucks red wine from carpets, natron sucks juices from corpses.]


I need something slow and painless. I’m thinking of having her explore a cave system. After falling asleep, she could be gently gassed by some venting of the Earth, some mysterious Gaian afflatus, or else drugged by a dripping mineral opiate.

Then the processes of nature would set to work. Recognising the unique beauty of her spirit, the Earth will opt not to putrefy her, but to preserve her - with moss, limestone, lichen, rust and roots. Or might she be bitten by a snake or a gold and turquoise spider with preservative for venom?

There are a lot of factual options for preservation. Certain soil conditions can be responsible. Aridity. Ice. The twelfth Pandito Hambo Lama achieved preservation through ‘a form of meditation known as shunyata, or emptiness’, [Fortean Times #184], ‘coupled with prolonged starvation and slow self-suffocation using a special belt that connects the neck with the knees in a lotus position’ [Wikipedia]

Doctor Glob’s ‘The Bog People’ is a book dear to my heart. It deals with the marvellously preserved corpses found in European peat bogs. ’There is a strange power in bog water,’ it is said, ‘which prevents decay’.

Perhaps some of the chemical processes may be useful, but not the violence. A lot of these Iron Age preservations were human sacrifices found with garrottes about their necks.


Nowadays we have cryogenics, formalin and Gunther von Hagens' ‘s plastination technique, but perhaps there are natural analogues. My fictional island is rich in minerals, after all …

The most intriguing thing I encountered at the museum was this:


Lynne made the connection. Somehow, she has always been able to track the way my mind wanders. I could easily imagine Lily encased in something like this formation of amethyst, flesh transmuted into gemstone, like something from the pages of Ballard’s The Crystal World.

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8 comments:

lily was here said...

Love the way your mind ticks. Im very fond of amethysts and have collected a few tho' but not as vivid in colour as the museum piece. A large piece sits on my desk here. Bees = Honey, one of nature's best natural preservatives. A sweet morbid sticky end like Herod's wife? I like your amethyst scenario better and look forward to reading what you do!! As Im partial to Lilys, please be kind and kill her gently?

xxx

ps LOST, the tv show got a bit TOO silly for me and Im so disappointed that it did.

Anonymous said...

death by rutile?

Anonymous said...

How literal do you want to be? Carbon monoxide can happen and brings on a quiet, unknowing, death (and short/sweet employment for canaries). Dessication could follow.

lily was here said...

an ametryst

Matt said...

Interesting idea, Sam.
If you want to have a preservation-of-beauty theme then something like amber would be good (although I'm not sure how you'd conjure enough for a little girl . . . it's generally for preserving mosquitoes and similar).
Natron or some other natural mummification would dessicate the corpse and the beauty would be lost.
Just a thought.

BwcaBrownie said...

Maybe you are letting your personal fatherness get in the way of the story.

My personal avoidance issue would be anguish of the loyal dog.

So is she allergic to the bee-sting which happens when she climbs a tree to smell a flower, lapsing into sleep from which she does not awake, leaving a perfect white bleached skeleton suspended sculpturally in the branches.

My own lost girl screenplay cannot be unleashed on the public until Azaria strides out of the Dead Heart followed by her loyal pack of dingoes whose ancestor suckled her from infancy.
She is 1.80m tall and her white hair hangs past her knees.

Unknown said...

I should open the discussion for creative ideas more often. Carbon dioxide is a really useful suggestion. I don't know about the bones in the tree because it would probably be found in the search, but I'm putting it in my wildcards file. Amber is also something I hadn't thought about [fits with the name of the play too], and it's reminiscent of honey. You're right Matt, about preserving the beauty, that's definitely an important point...

And Kate, I was thinking of keeping the option open of exchanging rutile for something else. But I'm going to keep the phrase 'The Mineral Sands people' which one often hears on the island

Unknown said...

ps: unfortunately, I'm one of those sad people who are devastated that there are only going to be 9 episodes of LOST this year.