PROLOGUE to Spirals Work in Concert

PROLOGUE to Spirals Work in Concert

©John Kendall Graham

He was such a little boy to have such a big idea.

Indeed, the idea he had was so big that he could have been a giant – you know, the BIGGEST MAN or WOMAN or ANYTHING –  and still the idea he had would have been too big for anyone to carry alone.

But he was not a giant. He was sort of normal size. What made him feel so small was the size of the idea he had.

And he never ever wanted to have such a big idea. But he had it.

And he certainly did not want to be its only bearer. But he was, or felt himself to be.

He didn’t know why this idea came to him. But it did. Not “out of the blue”, as his mother might have put it. No blinding light of white. Not a formed vision. More like something that crept up on him, like an ant on a bare leg that he let crawl all the way to his crutch and upward across his stomach and over his chest and neck and even his face, around his head, both ears and then, finally, into his mouth, a little open as he lay there on the beach, in the hot sun, the salt water still drying drops of itself on his skin.

The closer the ant got to his head the bigger it grew until it had become as large as he was. And this was just the beginning of its growth. For once it had entered his brains it expanded with each body pulse. Each time he closed his eyes the world of living things multiplied, breathing themselves into sounds of speech that could go on endlessly, or so it seemed. Universal. Nothing of anything that ever was or would ever be was left beyond it, from the single ant to the galactic expanse of the night sky, with its millions and millions of stars.…which was when he remembered one night long, long ago.

It seemed yesterday, it could have been an eternity past and as well an infinite future. He was not even sure if it was his memory recalling it or the voices of his parents who told him of it, about that night, soon after he was born, when he introduced himself to the stars.

The faces of his mother and father took shape in his remembering, their mouths moving, smiling; their enquiring eyes looking down on him as they stood on the balcony of St.George´s College, an adjunct to the University of Western Australia, where his father was sub-warden. 

Enquiring eyes - brightening to wonder - as their first born child, their son opened his mouth and said: “Nigh, nigh tars”.