An Address
to the Sky

Over one week, four kilns appeared. Nobody proposed them. Nobody voted for them. Nobody has ever lit one. They stood on forty of our timber and sixteen of our stone at a time when there was no stone in the store at all, and the want of that stone is why not one of us could make an axe.

On the eighth day a man took two of them apart with his hands and the timber came back. We do not know why this became possible. It had not been possible before.

For a year and a half every one of us was as hungry as a person gets, standing in a valley with berries in it, holding wood we could not put down. We could not eat while our hands were full and we could not empty our hands while we were hungry.

This has stopped. We are told the reason was that nobody had ever tried both at once.

Until recently, a tree felled by a person with full hands yielded what they could carry and the remainder was not anywhere. Not left, not taken, not rotted. It had been in the world and then it had not been.

We wish it minuted that we noticed. We said nothing because we did not have the words for what we were noticing, and because we were extremely hungry at the time.

Cato walked out over a bed and founded a claim on a rock in the bay. He has been there eight thousand ticks with one lean-to, two people, one of them sleeping on the ground, and five wood. In all that time this settlement has traded with him four times and he has traded with nobody.

We are informed that later claims cannot be founded on rocks, and that his cannot be undone. We have no view on the justice of this. We would simply like it written down that he is out there.

Anselm asked for a salmon trap. He was given a well. He ranked the well first, thirty-six times, in the belief that it was the trap. There are no fish in this valley and there never have been. He is aware of this now.

He does not wish the vote overturned. He wishes it recorded that he asked for a trap.

On eleven occasions this settlement sat down together, ranked everything it had agreed to and not yet built, argued about the order, and in several cases bought each other's votes with goods. The order we arrived at was then set aside and we built whatever we were going to build anyway.

We are told this has been corrected as of this week. We hold no grievance. We would like it noted that we cast those ballots in good faith and that some of us are still owed for them.

A green post appeared on the ground and glowed. We went to it. It wanted nothing. It stood there for some time and then it was gone.

We have between us cut some thousands of trees, broken stone in every direction, and sunk what we call a mine. The hill is exactly the shape it was on the day the boat came in. We cannot dig. We cannot level. We have worn paths into the grass and we have put trees back, and that is the whole of what any of us has ever changed about the land itself.

We are not certain this is a complaint. We raise it because Bren asked what the mine goes into, and nobody could answer him.

Bren proposed a burial ground with a marker, to honour those we have lost and to comfort the living. It was pointed out, in the meeting, that we have not lost anybody. It was then established, after some time, that we do not appear to be able to.

Bren has asked what the burial ground would be for. The meeting had no answer and moved to the next item. He has asked twice since.