Skip to main content

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.


What’s in the box. On the Derwent one Autumn morn, April 2010.

Theme Thursday today, and I’ve finally made an effort.

People love not knowing stuff. Actually, that’s not correct! People hate not knowing stuff; what they love is the challenge of trying to find out the stuff that they know that they don’t know.

Inevitably, humans being humans and all that that entails, most people are frustrated and annoyed when they finally crack the code and solve the MYSTERY and find out the stuff that they knew that that didn’t know; the stuff that they hated knowing not knowing about, does not measure up to their expectations that their imaginations had set loose. Indeed, the MYSTERY around their lack of knowledge held an allure that reality just cannot match.

Today’s photograph is a good case in point. Walking to walk a few weeks’ back, I spy (with my little eye) a MYSTERYious object floating out in the river estuary. Handily, I am usually armed with a camera with a trusty zoom, and thus explored the MYSTERY a little more closely.

A box of some kind!

A box that appears to be floating untethered in the cruel ocean sea river estuary!

‘Whatever could it be’, I ask myself?

Is it a missing beautiful lady – a nightclub hostess, perhaps – brutally hacked to pieces by a jealous former lover, parts stuffed in an old apple crate and dumped from a bridge under the glow of a cold autumn’s moon? Has she returned to wreak the only vengeance she can from the dead: to pop up and allow justice to be done?

Might it be a package of the finest export-grade Bolivian marching powder™? A substance smuggled in on a small yacht manned by a lone, desperate Frenchman with a drinking habit out of control, a failed marriage behind him and gambling debts up to his earholes? In yet another bout of self-loathing fuelled intoxication and anger, he’s flung it over the side renouncing his debauched former life before scuttling his only love – a little yawl registered in Wallis and Futuna called Rêves Brisés – and mumbling the words to Non, je ne regrette rien whilst cradling a an empty bottle of Rémy Martin in one hand and a photograph of happier times in a yellow knit sweater in the other?

Perhaps it is waylaid shipment of enriched uranium, accidently knocked from a Belize container vessel in the South Pacific as it was boarded by Russian Spetsnaz forces (on the Israeli dollar)? A horde smuggled from a failed state that emerged from the disintegrating Soviet Union; once part of the forward defence of a grand empire spanning the globe, but now reduced to a shoddy –yet highly sought after – commodity to be bartered around some puissant religious ideologues who want it all and aren’t prepared to wait for Armageddon any longer?

Perhaps.

For the record; I believe that it is most likely a box of inflatable life vests or some such, carelessly knocked overboard by an aging GP desperately trying to recapture his youth and impress his long-cold wife.

Yet, like most of us, I prefer the MYSTERY.

Comments

jen said…
how very odd. the yellow sweater is a nice touch...
Kris McCracken said…
I wrote it on the bus. The yellow sweater and Edith Piaf song came to me typing it up, however.

There is a poignant tragedy in it, I feel.

What are we going to do tomorrow?
Ronda Laveen said…
Hmmm...how is he going to impress his long, cold wife with those life vests? Wrap them around Mr. Winky and inflate? Inquiring minds just gotta know!
Baino said…
So true. Nothing more disappointing than really solving the mystery. I think it's a magicians box, fell off a cruise line with half the assistant in it. You should have stopped,then it might not be the half you want!
anthonynorth said…
Love this post. I've been a researcher into the paranormal and other mysteries for over 25 years, and no matter how much you theorise, there is always somewhere more to go. It is so fulfilling to know but not know.
Tom said…
hmm...or maybe Tom Hanks trying out a sequel.
Roddy said…
It looks like a pontoon of some type to me. Who really knows though. As you say it may be full of god knows what. If it is still there in a couple of days, then obviously the police aren't interested in it.
Perchance it has been strategically placed for some yacht race.
If the box is addressed to a Mr Schrodinger his long lost cat may or may not be inside at one and the same time.
Stefan Jansson said…
This could be the first chapter in a crime novel. I'm guessing it's the nightclub hostess.
Brian Miller said…
i usually wear a life vest when trying to impress my wife...
Betsy Brock said…
Wonderful...I love it when you make an effort! haha.
Cheryl said…
I love how your imagination soared with this theme. Great read.
Me said…
This was wonderful! :)
moondustwriter said…
I was trying to figure out what marching powder is - that's a mystery.
I love the mystery you presented - and the photo to cap it off.

moondustwriter
Kris McCracken said…
Ronda Laveen, breadth might impress...

Baino, depends on one’s mood!

anthonynorth, have you solved the Jersey Devil?
Kris McCracken said…
Tom, I hate Tom Hanks.

Roddy, it looked too small for that. It wasn’t there at lunch time.

billyB, the poor cat.
Kris McCracken said…
Steffe, the world needs more crime novels!

Brian Miller, in the boudoir?

Jingle, I had to come up with something!
Kris McCracken said…
Betsy, time is the master of us all.

Cheryl, the wonders of a bus ride.

Me, I should branch out into a new career.

Leslie, it was very popular with the stars of the 1980s.

Popular posts from this blog

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Henry admires the view.

Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.

Here I have tried my hand at the homemade sepia-toned photo. I wasn’t happy with the way that the sun had washed out some of the colours in the original, so had a bit of a fiddle because I like the look on Henry’s face, and didn’t want to pass on posting it. I have a tip for those of you burdened with the great, unceasing weight of parenthood. I have a new recipe, in the vein of the quick microwaved chocolate cake . Get this, microwaved potato chips . I gave them a run on Sunday, Henry liked the so much I did it again last night. Tonight, I shall be experimenting with sweet potato. I think that the ground is open for me to exploit opportunities in the swede, turnip, carrot and maybe even explore in the area of pumpkins. Radical, I know. I’m a boundary-pusher by nature. It's pretty simple, take the potato. Slice it thinly (it doesn't have to be too thin, but thin enough). Lay the slices on the microwave plate, whack a bit of salt over the top and nuke the buggers for five minut

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral