Thousands of animal species are threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Here is a small sample. Axolotls are those enchanting salamanders, limb-growers, Bowie-esque in style and, now, frequency. Bicknell’s thrush with confetti of stars on breast, insect quests no longer synchronised. Coral (staghorn), crystalline dendrites of the deep, food for many before warming and mass bleach. Dragonfly called splendid cruiser soars above rivers, mint green eyes seeing unimaginable colours.
In the midst of the polemical environmental debate between the reactionaries of the right and the activists of the left, an under-examined knowledge system remains neglected. As the descendants of those who carved nations out of “New Worlds” fight over contamination of the planet, ancient epistemologies are being erased, along with the peoples who existed before systematic colonization.
I gaze long and hard at myself in the mirror, straining to reach the girl behind the face. I’m in there somewhere and it’s both liberating and terrifying to think that the person before my eyes is now the ‘real’, emotional, non-medicated version of my being.
On the 15th night of the 7th month in the Chinese lunisolar calendar, the lower realm is opened so that ghosts and spirits can return to roam the living world, seeking food and entertainment. During this month (鬼月), Taoists and Buddhists must perform rituals to absolve the suffering of the deceased.
At six it was a black mirror capturing and framing the first settled shapes of rising sun, but by seven the reservoir held ten thousand triangles of light that reconfigured themselves across the surface like a shoal of rising herring. There was a light breeze too, and birdsong from the curlews and house martins as they rode the unseen currents of air.
I have never liked myself as a smoker. A full decade and a few thousand cigarettes in, I still don’t. But what keeps me at it, with fondness, is that I might not have him were it not for the fags. When I was very small and his beard was still black, he would kneel by the bathtub and I would sit happily in the warm water. His eyes would swim as he babbled to me and I babbled back.
For longer than I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with stuff. The sort of stuff you keep because you think you might need it at some point down the line. I’ve got stuff in drawers, stuff shoved under the bed, stuff stuffed down the back of wardrobes. There’s stuff in bags; stuff collecting not just dust, but weird damp residue; stuff buried under more stuff.
It’s the middle of the night. I’ve just woken from a bad dream. In it, three lynxes in the garden of my childhood home are chasing my parents’ scrawny runt of a cat. He makes it to the safety of the kitchen, where I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, and leaps onto my lap. The lynxes paw at the cat flap, but can’t get through.
The Museum Of Extinct Animals is many things. It is a labyrinth of dusty secrets. It is a fortress of fallen totems from another time. It is a symposium of ghosts. The Museum Of Extinct Animals is a cathedral-sized capsule containing stuffed creatures of rare distinction. Mythical creatures, post-extinction.
