Redhead Amok in Antarctica
Bitter Endless
I'm here at Pole during the long night, about 5+ months to go before I see grass and trees and cats and exposed skin and birds again. 5+ months before I taste an avocado again. 3 more months before I see the sun again. Right now it is a sky filled so full of stars and the moon bright shining silver blue on the snow and auroras dancing green and purple like writing in the sky. I am here at the station with 42 other people, the same people without change since Feb 16th and I will see no one else, no one new, before Oct 17th or later. I miss faces, familiar faces of friends who are not here, the softness of my cat's fur and her purr as she licks my neck, her greeting as I walk into a room. But I also know after 9 months with nothing but what I have here now I will be shocked and scared by the faces of people who I haven't been looking at for the whole winter. Friends from last summer will be orange and shocking and scary to me, even as I grab them in hugs so tight I may knock them over with the force of my need to hold them. I know if you handed me my cat right now I'd squeeze her so tight in my need for comfort that I would probably kill her, or drown her in my tears of joy.
This winter is long and many of us have been toast since very early on. Too early. There have already been incidents where good members of our community have lost their shit, loudly and with bad words directed at good people who they will have to live and work with for the next 5+ months without cease. Some people have become paranoid insomniacs reacting defensively to everything, even as simple as how soft the toilet paper is, others drink alone on their rooms every night. Some people argue just to argue, taking stands on wrong issues in wrong places where they are afraid to admit they are wrong. There are hatreds developing, people being avoided, people avoided. We are simply too much for each other. We can't get away.
Some people have gained weight, others have lost it, some continue on either trajectory. Some people are afraid of the dark and the cold and rarely venture outside and looks of pity cross their faces as we who work out there get dressed for the cold. Some of us prefer the outdoors, the dark, the stars in the sky, shooting and blinking and blanketing the black moonless firmament above us. Some of us only find peace outdoors. Some of us would rather shovel the same snow over and over again than face another hour in front of the computer, or a minute interaction with someone whose simplest personality quirk, once endearing and curious and unique, has turned into the one thing about them they could get murdered for.
Some of us work alone, invisible. Some of us work always in a team, with the same people every damn day, every damn hour.
Some people overreact, some others underreact. Some are overwhelmed, some underwhelmed. Some people work more hours than they should, some others hardly work.
Some of us miss family, some of us miss sunlight, some of us miss Indian food, some of us miss the touch of a pet, a hug, the kiss and caress of a lover, a spouse, a stranger.
None of us miss advertisements and commercials and the constant pounding of consumerism and the artificial needs created in us by clever marketing. But that does not mean that some of us don't buy and shop and lurk online in the world of untouchable material goods, shipping boxes of fantasy goods to family and friends at home ready for us to open when we get home, with the glee of the NEW deprived, the joy of the bargain hunter, the lust of the consumer long denied. Some of us spend money even here, some of us spend nothing at all.
Some people don't sleep, others can't wake up, some people do both depending on the day. Some people separate from others, sit alone. Others are never seen alone, cannot be deprived of their chosen company, their safety. Some people drift from alone to group top alone again. Some people are like children and tattle on others, some people don't give a shit about the small stuff and have no opinion. Some people think we are well-led, well-guided through this winter. Others don't. Some people are universally liked. Most of us aren't.
We are 43 diverse and odd people foisted upon each other by proximity and boredom and repetition, into relationships we would never have chosen outside this rare isolated space. Some of us will leave here never to speak to another 2009 Winterover Polie again, done with it, over it, exhausted by it. Some of us will leave here but here will never leave them, never feeling quite right unless it is with someone who wintered with us, like soldiers who served in some strange war together, have a rare bond shared by only just under 1600 people in the entire history of the world, those few of us who have wintered at the South Pole.
Some of us pace the halls, restless with wanting to go somewhere else. Some of us browse the webpages of our dreams, thinking about our futures post-Ice: vacations, other people, other weather, other horizons, other jobs. Other. Some of us plan next winter here, unable to escape the pull of Pole, the cocoon of security, the illusion of comfort, no matter the strain of disgruntlement that runs through this season.
There is no escape from here. We are tired. Our patience is limited, we are snapping sooner and sooner each month before our two day weekend comes around. Weeks grow long, tempers grow short, frustrations bring anger and tears and depression and drinking and bad behaviour and judgment and sleeplessness and a host of other ills both social and private.
There are only 43 of us, and we dream of each other, we dream of this place, we wake to each other, we wake to this place. We can't leave.
I look at the horizon, the faint silver blue line of snow that touches the black of night, the stars almost at my feet in the dark that covers us. I look up and get dizzy and tearful at the Milky Way, its galaxies cold clusters of light against the dark, more detailed to my naked eye than I have ever seen. I watch the auroras dance and hurdle and unfurl like cats tails, cuneiform writing in the sky, telling me stories I should be able to read. I see the moon so bright in the sky and the ice crystals in the air between us making huge rainbows that touch the horizon, circling that fat white moon, a Moondog. I have watched auroras spell names and tell secrets, whip tails across the sky, flash low on the horizon green and blue like the moon on the wrinkled sea above my head forging a path to the horizon, a way out of here. I have countless times made wishes on the shooting stars, swift flashes of "Ooooh!s" and pointing and gasps of "Did you see!", fallen over backward and lain flat on the bumpy cold snow gazing upward, trying to see more, more sky, the whole sky, afraid to miss a single spark, a change of colour from yellow to red to green to blue of these bright jewels in the frigid black velvet of the heavens.
Yet still, as much as I love winter, I am tired of it. Tired of being here and no where else. I want a different winter, one in which I don't mind coming inside and seeing my fellow travelers on this tiny station. I love the snow, the dark, the cold, the wind, the drifting, the impossible tasks accomplished slowly and carefully, the sky, the peace outside. I want to be able to come inside and share this miracle, have it sustain me, energize me to survive the next months to come, or even moments.
I just wish it were as peaceful inside, that there were people inside to whom I was eager to return, to tell of the sky the dark the cold the effort that brings joy to my skin and bones and flesh and heart and mind. I come inside wanting to hug someone with happiness.
But then reality hits. The ones I want to hug are not here right now.
So I retreat to my room.
And that is as far as I will get away for the next 5+ months.
posted by: coldwish at 05/30/09 22:24 |
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south pole waste winter 2009
