I've got my writing mojo back and since sending the latest draft of the first article to get more feedback, I've moved onto the second. I hope the institute still want it but if they don't, nothing lost. I think it's good to rewrite the second while the first is still fresh in my mind.
I've posted this before and Sarah Toa may remember it because we both knew Melusina*. I'm posting it again because I hope this time it will be published. I had to remove it from my thesis but I think it should have been included. At some point though you just need to stop because you have enough words and your supervisor tells you to!
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I hardly knew her - an artist - like me. In death she looms larger than she ever did in life. The manner of her dying tragic, poetic - terrifying. Drowned in the deep wild cauldron of blue-black sea.
I couldn’t go to The Gap for months after her suicide. When I finally gazed into the beckoning throat I saw her struggling there, the cast shadow of her desperation wavering in my own.
She had tried many times to end her life. This time the slab-stone sentinel guarded the way out - the arms of the deep chasm held her. Cruel Mother-sea swallowed her soul - silently, whole. Into the Void.
The story unfolded in disembodied anecdotes. An image formed, imprinted itself savagely on my mind - and never left. She had woven, hurried, between the ubiquitous tourists, threatening to knock them down in her drugged and drunken haste, staggered with grim resolve towards the gaping wound in the granite. No one saw her step off the edge of the world, but they peered into the abyss to see where she had gone.
And they saw her trying to swim.
Jesus.
She swam for 28 exhausting minutes in the gently heaving maelstrom - from the time the call went out, until, only just too late, someone leaned from the rescue boat to grasp a handful of long red-floating locks, already turned to soft brown seaweed.
Perhaps her movements were just residual shreds of instinct, that she hadn’t really changed her mind. I imagine how she felt and what she saw: the hole of the sky framed by sheer black towering granite, white limbs darting like silver fish over the abyss.
Melusina still swims in the dark sea of my unconscious.
Image: Author. Oil on board. Study.
*Melusina is a pseudonym for an artist I knew who 'apparently' suicided at The Gap. I have not sought permission to use her real name, preferring instead to protect her identity. In one version of a German myth Melusina is a creature, half fish and half human. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/melusina.html
That story of Melusina is heartbreaking and chilling. It is so sad to finally sail off into the air and then the sea feeling the overwhelming desire to finally end it all. She must have had enough. Done.
ReplyDeleteYes it was such a sad story Robin. Melusina was an accomplished musician and artist but had suffered depression all her life as I remember, and it seems she just wanted the pain to stop. The image haunts me because I fear she may have changed her mind as soon as she jumped off, and then because she didn't die straight away, may have had time to regret her decision, or be devastated she was still alive.
DeleteNot that long after this incident another artist suicided at The Gap. She couldn't get over the death of her daughter. But at least she made sure she jumped from high rocks onto other rocks, so her death would have been quicker.
I hear a lot about suicide in my job. My Aboriginal students are constantly losing their relations to suicide. It's an epidemic in the Noongar community.
It's tragic in every way. I didn't know this about the Aboriginal population. Makes me wonder how often there was suicide in the community before modern times. I was just about to type that I didn't know anyone who had committed suicide and then I remembered. So sad in every way. Someone dearly loved by my sister, but her deeply heartfelt love could not save him from his intentions.
Deletewhat an excruciating situation to be in, for Melusina and observers/ rescuers. The longest 28 minutes of a lifetime. I hope she's at peace now.
ReplyDeleteYes, such a long time to contemplate what you just did and what's next! It's a very dangerous place so conditions must have been pretty calm for a boat to get in there Kylie. Even so it would still be a treacherous place because the sea heaves up an down, in and out out - even when it is calm. I really hope she is at peace too.
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