TLB6: Josie Morway, Diamonds, + Ruby Murray

Nauru by Josie Morway

Diamonds – “Swan (49°02′00″,119°03′00″)”

Excerpt from Indonesia
by Ruby Murray

I had an atlas as a child. It was black and oblong and called The Student’s Jacaranda. It looked a bit like my dad’s Far Side of the Moon album, a prism on its cover spilling a rainbow towards the dog-eared spine. As my dad sat and played records, I lay on the floor, conquering.

I have no recollection of looking at Indonesia in this atlas. I do remember looking at the white and grey pages of Alaska and Antarctica, and at the heaving lines of the topographical maps. I remember looking at huge stretches of blue emptiness, interrupted only by latitude’s and longitude’s fast arcs.

I never thought that I’d grow up and live in the cramped red dot of a city. I thought I’d be out in the open, riding the longitudinal lines to their end, rushing forwards off the edge of one map and into the next. Travel, according to the Atlas, would be wheeling and rapid. Looking down over the world I could see myself skimming lightly across its top, my toes never quite connecting with the ground, the cool, musty air of my parents’ un-renovated Ivanhoe front living room stretching out in a bubble behind me.

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Read the introductory post here.

- Ryan Catbird