Thank You, Moon Gazing Hare

I want to thank the Moon Gazing Hare, appropriately. She who sits on my chest of drawers, with her neck cranked back waiting patiently, sniffing the air. She watches stellar time and I, sometimes crouched with her, sitting low on my dark blue carpet stared out to space. She came from a trip to Cambridge, which ended in a disaster. Retrieved out of a handbag, unbroken. The Moon Gazing Hare is made from alabaster, she is white and chalky like how we imagine the moon to be. But she looks soft, like cheese or mochi, which is also how we imagine the moon to be. In flux / many things at once / ‘the inconstant moon.’ I love her. I fear her. I am in awe of her.

The Moon Gazing Hare has been a constant. As I turned over another year, changed offices, visited continents, said goodbyes, wept at brides, left a job and started a new one; she has been steadfast and still. Her elongated ears swept back and streamlined, her tiny eyes marking the heavens. Apparently a Norse myth, a pagan belief, where if one clocked a hare looking up at the moon it was a good omen. A sign of stirring hope, new beginnings, re-birth and growth. That was all stated on the package I received her in, which is now in the recycling. The Moon Gazing Hare will stay with me still, I’ll put her on my window sill. For tonight the moon is full, a yellow dot high above our polluted air, beaming.

Old stuff old me

I have recently been sifting through a lot of old stuff. My mum is moving house and by way of being her daughter, a lot of my old things I don’t use or think about anymore have ended up there. I emptied a cardboard box with frayed edges, scraps of old tape hanging off its corners. Squished in there amidst crumpled uniforms and a Brownies sash, was a small pencil case that had been zipped up to bursting, stuffed with what I objectively define as “bits and bobs”. A badge pin, small bit of broken wood scribbled with pencil marks, dead yellow feather, lifeless endearing lizard charms made up of microscopic beads, smelly gel pens, a ladybird pendant that doubles up as a watch. Trinkets and Talisman. 

I am supposed to be lessening the load. Of things that my mum will have to take with her to the new place, so I have to make sacrifices, I realise, but I look at these little pieces of me from when I was eleven and I can’t. I remember the feather and that bit of wood. I couldn't explain to you why they mattered or what I remember about them. But I do know them. A certain recognition you feel as with the sensation of seasons. So I keep the pencil case in tact and leave it to the side.

Then there are these textbooks. My school workbooks from Year 3 until Year 8. What am I going to do with these? Will I ever read them - no. Will anyone else ever want to read them - no. But I can’t lightly put them in the bin bag with the the old envelopes and school year planner. I am stuck. I want to get rid of things but they won’t let me! Instead, they draw me closer until I am sat in a pool of light from a cheap lamp staring down at my old work. 

MOVIES (written twice in bubble writing, twice in normal writing)

1. Space Jam

2. BFG

3. Jurassic Park

...

I list ten “movies” in total but I get the gist. My past self is listing my favourite films in order. And let me tell you, my description of Jurassic Park is nothing like Jurassic Park. I manage to list all the main characters and I am glad to say that Jeff Goldblum then, made as much of an impression on me, as he still does today. And Space Jam? That was a pretty good movie. I can still remember all the words to I Believe I Can Fly. I believe I could touch the sky. I think about it every night and day. Spread my wings and fly away. I believe I can SSSSSOAR

So. What makes me me now and me then? Am I really the same person when I have no recollection of watching the BFG, yet I still love Jurassic Park and remember Michael Jordan playing basketball against aliens? If I throw this stuff away and I forget it all, do I stop being the old me because nothing reminds me of her?

I have a job now. And in that job I get given a quarterly review, which is an assessment of your character in a professional light. I guess that’s a little bit like a school report. I have a school report open in front of me from when I was eight and it says under Listening Skills that ‘Rimika is a good pupil at listening. She always asks questions in class but in some cases, she asks too many questions about things she already knows the answers to...’ The teacher continues. And it strikes me that my line manager gave me exactly the same criticism last week; I ask too many questions to things I already know the answers to. I’m twenty-nine! How have I never taken this criticism on board?

I imagined an eight year old would be different to their thirty year old self, and seventy year old self. For one: different priorities. I am eight and I worry that my tamagotchi is dying and Olivia doesn't like me. I am twenty-nine and I worry about a flat leak and the cost of commuting. But I guess immediate thoughts play no outcome in the way you are. Because clearly I still am - very much like I was - when I was at eight. Just bigger with more money. I don’t know if this is worrying or the facts of life.

So I gather my things and place them in to piles, I throw some away and leave others to ponder over. I have a week left before they all get judged. To keep or not to keep. What about all those kids who's parents never kept anything, maybe they couldn’t, simply lack of space and time. I’m sort of lucky to have these things that remind me of a person I don’t know anymore because they morphed in to me. I’m pretty happy with things as they are so I don’t feel too bad about it. Thankfully. And that pencil case. When did I make the decision to put all my worldly treasures in to that khaki zipped sack, like Noah’s Ark adrift on a voyage until the time was right.

I remember something from my archaeology degree.

Burials and shipwrecks are what we call “closed contexts”. They remain untouched for years and years until their own civilisation forgets, and when we find them, they give us precious insight. A snapshot in time otherwise lost forever to the noise of history.

Nothing Happens in Space

Everything seemed futile to Greta today. There were only three petri-dishes left out of the three hundred she had arranged to undergo experimentation and therefore if these three didn’t show any signs of morphing, a non-technical term she liked to use to inform others of any slight observable transformation, well then, her research was simply, fucked. Three out of three hundred is 1% she thought. 

Her research assistant Gregor tried to look busy with a microscope. Greta knew too well it stared out over nothing, microscopically enhancing the abyss of another dead petri-dish she thought; he was slender and nervous and reminded her of unusable dripping pipettes. How could her calculations have gone so awry in real life? She berated herself tapping her fingers on the sideboard of the sink and went out through the swinging department doors.

Clipping her heels on the corridor and high-tailing it down the cold stone stairs, Greta leaves the building and makes it across the lawn to sit beneath a tall oak tree. It is June and the temperature perfect for human inhabitation she thinks, the warm breeze may even be considered soothing. Sitting, pondering over her thesis rubbing her hands like a stalk cleaning his beak on its wings, she senses someone there. 

‘Hello, Roger’, it sounds pitiful though it was meant to come out neutral. 

‘What’s the matter?’ Aloof and kind, Roger was a fellow scientist from the Physics Department where Greta rarely had meetings.

She sighed, said nothing and apologised without cause stating her research was not going so well and she was about to go upstairs to find out how badly it had all gone. Roger stooped and sat down on the other side of the trunk.

‘Do you know after the big bang the universe continued to expand for the next million years or so without anything much happening?’ Greta was about to leave but couldn’t because his words offered something she wanted: unpromising consolation. 

‘A million years of nothing happening, Greta, under who’s watchful eye? No scientist. Not us. Or so assumed. We must sometimes suffer the circumstances of space where nothing seems to happen when we watch it closely. Break attention for a moment then you’ll miss a miracle.’

With this ominous and profoundly unscientific thesis, Greta crossed back the lawn looking up curiously at her laboratory window.