Stepping nimbly from Hansom top I cast my, um, brr to the mire and bounded, nimbly, up rainslick steps: two—to—four—for—five—fie! Alone in the gazebo, by dainty Nouveau curls, sat sweetly Ben, victim of muddying, puddling Melbourne. It may have been a near thing: pausing mid-gallop, clocking the sky—Zounds! or similar quaint exclamation—then steering his mane to cover (swiftly, too, if his barely moistened outfit was any sign). Mummied in red ribbon, a dusting of ginger bristles about the jawline, he turned his head mildly, sweetly, his features almost softening as I approached. And down, lithely, I sat, my light grey suit damp, dark grey. Lovely day, old rock! A tiny smile, registering like a twitch. You’re wondering, of course, what I'm doing here. Heralding the apocalypse? Mm. He was more substantial than I remembered him, nearing a brawler's build. But though set in an age-inflated face, his sweet Jersey cow eyes had lost none of their puissance.
I fished a thermos from my drawers. Whisky? It’s 3pm. I didn't ask the time. Things that bad, huh? Pouring out a palmful:—A writer must have his poison. What’s your excuse, then? I threw back my hand. Ergh. You want to know why I'm here? Let’s say I do. Drumming rain; timpani thunder; dramatic middle-distance stare: The Renaissance! Well, it was nice seeing you again. Allow me my monologue, sweet Ben, for I have come to you fresh from the shores of Hell itself. So that I might stand before you today I have braved trials too harrowing to recount, seen things no soul should witness. I could tell of moving accidents by flood and field. Of deserts idle, rough quarries, hills whose heads touch the sky. Heaven, but go on. Of vast silver sacks and yellow boxes. Of treason committed against my own self. You’re losing me. The point is: it’s been rough. And I need my 2IC. I need my Ben.
He surveyed the sheets of weather with a brooding air. I’m afraid your Ben is kind of busy right now. Too busy for revolution? He turned. What would we be revolting against, exactly? Exactly everything: jobs, parents, despotism, losing touch with our friends. It’d be us against the world. Hu-h! The world is not opposing us. The world is indifferent to us. The world does not give us a second thought. The Renaissance is dead, H—, if ever it lived. Dress up the corpse as you will; it won’t wake. That emptiness you’re feeling? A thousand revolutions couldn’t cure it. He draped an arm over the nearer of my shoulders and exhaled sympathetically. I hear exercise helps. The downpour eased into drizzle. A drop of golden sun (me). Then it was clear. Standing, Ben smoothed a crease on his jumbo jodhpurs. I wasn’t too icy, was I? You were, yes. The best I’d ever known. But I take it you will not be again.
Onset
Reader, I am returned—mussed up, fuzzy about the edges, but returned. Returned from the wilderness; from cooling pitch; from nine years (plus!) of inactivity. Returned, triumphant, from the bowels of the Overflow. Sweep away my magnificent unwashed hair—parse the bone structure, the shape of the nose, the glisten of the lips, and you’ll see that the incoming figure is me, a web log from 2005. Near-heroic, bursting through bramble on a counterfeit horse: a picture of courage and resilience and after-dark ache:—Returned, raising my cutlass under everlasting stars. There is no remnant of community in these weeds, and it is not the 8th of May. But it is Melbourne, the bolthole into which we were born, and it is spring, the season of hay fever and hope, and it is me, the tireless progenitor of revolutions. Read the change in my eyes, not my waning body—the depth they convey, the promise that this time, this time, it will be different.
Let me settle a moment with this warm teacup and this ugly cross-stitch blanket and I will tell you where I buried the silver. There are trails in my sentences but I suspect, at this stage in the game, the reader would prefer plainspeak. Permit me this brief diversion into scene-setting (its relevance will soon become clear):—April: feverish on the bed of my childhood, with the blind not drawn and something of autumn stealing in, I was the recipient of an epiphany. I had experienced bouts before, little jolts of purpose after dark, but nothing so potent, so acute. It lasted for the best part of a week, as piercingly as in its first sting, and only reduced in intensity when I had committed—in blood—to return. (You’ll recall, I hope, that I made good on this commitment.) Now, as I begin to type this out, and now, as I redraft it several years on, I trace my fingers over its scar.
Queueing for cleanskins down Murphy’s (following afore. epiph.) I hatched a plot; and under blush candleglow (following return) I made a map, on which, in sensual crimson, I marked out the locations of five key individuals. Isolation is essential—some trace element can be found in every worthwhile endeavour—but not in isolation; in isolation its benefits are negated, snuffed out in a vacuum of self. I knew that if this was going to work, work like it never once has, and never will, and probably can’t, I would need allies by my side, or at least mooning about the periphery; allies who can withstand bad winds and worse poetry; allies from my old red book, estranged or otherwise, who had stood with me all those years ago. But I will persist even if none can be rallied. Even if I stumble and fail and don’t persist. No matter my number, no matter the odds, these hideous timeworn antlers will light up the dark.