Desires Systems: Two

Parallel Windows

The island’s largest human community sat nestled on the southern shore, off a sprawl of green sugarcane fields. Inhabitations ran in rows from elevated fields down to the breezy coastline. Roadways lined with walls of magenta Bougainvillea bushes fed through busy pathways.

Spanning undefinable periods, the structures were cut from soft beige stone, lava rock or tropical Milo wood with woven sugarcane canopies. At once elegant and modest, their solid orderly volumes hid the islanders’ quotidian mess. There were no doors or window shutters between residences and the close plotting between them formed a maze of living arrangements in a shifting state of minimalist fluidity. 

The perpetually back-sliding islanders lacked the grasp of time outside the liquid present. Somehow their past narratives mostly overlapped harmoniously- evolving peacefully and entangled. An organism of everyday intimacies, tragedies, and amorous connections in tandem.

Innocence unfolded in the open air of daylight. The citizens gathered at dawn along the beach promenade selling foraged goods, woven items, or small bits of technology that appeared along their wanderings. Cheerful bartering buzzed below the mechanical growl of ancient cranes hoisting large fish and other sea creatures from undefined metallic armatures. Brought from the deep these oddities were seemingly endless in variety and quantity.  

Occasionally the sacred filtering fibers of deceased whales were snared in shiplines causing fear and excitment. The whales swam through their own unique reflections of time. As the islanders slipped backward they held positions of present, past, and future congruently. Harboring the most treasured and dangerous material residual. The islanders collected it through the saddest of animal losses for which they were forever aware of their moment of passing.

Through these transitions, the forces at play truncated the smooth fluidity of the Islander’s experience. Casting chaotic moments of blackout and erasure. Loves liquidated, family structures shuffled, and great episodes of loss, crisis, and confusion tumbled the circumstantial valence.