Arrival (Philip Hunter)

 

Waking

The geographic grid point of the detonation of a nuclear bomb is ground zero. It is the place where the bomb arrives. On the land’s surface this is the zero centre, or epicentre, from whence the radius is measured outwards. But it is also the place where zero remains after arrival. Nothing is left. In 2001 New Yorkers on the day were quick to name the place of arrivals, ground zero. Buildings were transformed into living crematoria above the hard ground of downtown. The modern city lives as a target. Once hit there is a need to identify ground zero, even though two airplanes is not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The surface is still there afterwards, we can see, only it has been changed, seriously, since the arrival. Ground zero is meaningless outside of that moment of arrival, it is a passing term of reference. For anyway, there is no such thing as ground zero. The ground is number, it is matter, it cannot be zero. We tread upon it, rub it with our hands, dig it out with our fingers, smell the ground. Our arrival is something. We judge the consistency of the ground, we calculate and define. Even as we describe our reality we scrape ground together for material, mix it into pigment, makes signs of our existence in this unique ground. And as we do this we start seeing all the signs of life past and present, delicate leaf and bone and ash that are part of the ground. They go down literally onto our surface. Our own arrival may have been as recent as last century, or last Saturday.

Dreaming

Walking delicately over the ground, where we arrive we are here. The reception may be full of misunderstandings. The language may be antiquated or in another tongue. The place is familiar insofar as we can breathe. Some of our colleagues have the glazed look that says there is no gold. You would have thought we had got over our alchemy syndrome. Others hoped for rivers and find waterholes. One chap over there is already drawing up leases, as though that’s what it amounted to. Our arrival has been noted by the natives, who keep their distance. Any trouble and we’ll bring out the big artillery. A couple of fellows think it the place for a settlement, though they say that about everything in sight. Our cartographer is a bit of a draughtsman too, done some nice work capturing the likenesses of the native animals, whose pale brown coats are remarkably similar in colour to the soils in these parts. Ditto the noisy birds of the district, with feathers to match the flora of the unusual agglomerated trees.