Allegra Pilati

1 Of course, it is one of those things that is always around us, carrying with it among the most prominent fuels of our being. Yet, you barely notice the air when stationary. The train it is different. The train moves at such a velocity that suddenly - everything is subject to change. I look outside through the cracks in the timber and watch the world as it filters in and out of existence. Trees, mountains, tracks, vast divides altogether real enough to touch, are suddenly morphing into hazed mirages. I no longer have any way of knowing if they were, are or ever will be, entirely real. Such a burden is the knowledge. How my hair becomes sticky with existential dread.                I first boarded the train some two or three hours ago. Since then I have remained nestled between the mail bags. May you be concerned as to how I have not moved. It is true my limbs have begun cramping in this stiffened position. Oh ...

My Father’s father crossed the vast seas dividing Italy and Australia by boat. When he stood upon deck it was for months at a time that he would stare across the dividing liquid wastelands, crystal blue and lapping at the hull – an expanse that can sink this ship but does not sink this ship. I was raised in a family that loved me. Really, truly, madly, deliriously. So much so that I saw the far reaches of this world, long before I was near old enough to know what they meant. We boarded the ship that would carry us off the coast of Queensland, so we could cruise between the Pacific Islands, I would stand between the hot tubs, or perhaps under the wide screen TV’s, or sink into some forgotten corner of balcony space. I would look out over that same barren wasteland and think how it might be possible that we have as little means of survival at sea as we do in our hot deserts, yet we are fool enough to claim them opposites. My grandfather does not think like this. My mother and I can...