Writing in the third century, the Neoplatonist Zoticus predicted that one day a single mighty nation would rule all others. This nation will occupy an island in the center of a great ocean. It will rapidly collect all the wealth of the whole world, and all the kings of the world shall come to reside here. Writing in the fifth century, the Neoplatonist Proclus described this future nation as a beautiful mirage. According to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it will float on the horizon.
And here will the thing-child wash ashore. It will stride the cloud-colored beaches with no more awareness of its nudity than had the original humans.
There all plastic comes to a final rest. There the center holds, becalmed, in that Sargasso of plastics. The North Pacific Gyre, as that graveyard is known.
And arriving on this scene will stroll a human mother, wandering along that same beach, deep in her own grief. And the woman is essentially alone, accompanied by only one stylist, a publicist, four armed bodyguards, a yoga instructor, two lifestyle gurus, and a dietitian. This woman glimpses the thing-child: a slender sylphlike figure with skin as perfect as only plastic can be perfect. A face as smooth as only a photograph can be smooth. Its hair, a great bale of floss combed to rich fullness by infinite ocean waves. And from all outward appearances is the thing-child a she-child.
And the she-child is of impossible beauty.
And from a distance, upon first catching sight of the she-child, Plato claims that the lonely woman will call out. Stopped, paralyzed by the sight, she’ll gasp. The woman shall stumble forward a few steps, her arms raised involuntarily to embrace this vision, and she’ll cry out, “Madison?”
For here, to the eyes of a bereft mother, this gift from the sea appears to be a resurrection. And this woman strolling along the beach will be the nominal queen of this wealthy kingdom.
And here is a long-lost child seemingly reunited with its mourning parent. A miracle witnessed by all the attendant entourage.
Tears leap to the woman’s eyes. For this stranger, who stands nude on that gleaming beach… this stranger is slender and enigmatically calm—not pudgy and grouchy, not willful and sullen—but, still, the resemblance is otherwise perfect. This is the murdered child, glorified. Before she might call out a second time, Plato writes that the woman is choked with emotion.
And thus will evil plant his she-child in the nest of an unknowing bird.
Thus will goodness be cuckolded, according to the papyri of Sais. And evil seeks to fit goodness with a pair of horns.
For this otherworldly beauty, this she-child begotten of plastic and fostered by the sea, it opens its winsome arms to the human woman. With its sweet voice it says, “Mother.” The she-child advances to embrace the woman, and it says, “Camille Spencer, I am returned to you.” Embracing the bereaved woman, it says, “I return to you as proof of life everlasting. I bring you tidings of paradise.”
DECEMBER 21, NOON HAST
Fata Morgana
Gentle Tweeter,
Ultimately this is a tale about three islands. As was Lemuel Gulliver’s tale. Our first island was Manhattan. The second was a traffic island upstate. The third, we’re about to discover.
After our humiliating debacle at LAX, I accompanied my psychic shepherd to a customized CH-53D Sea Stallion, the
As we fly westward, what I notice initially is a faint glow on the horizon. Even in broad daylight, in the wrong direction, a freakish, premature dawn seems to be rising. A shimmering, blue glow. Little more than three hours after lifting off from LAX, the
My inebriated consort, Mr. Crescent City, leans forward, his amply veined eyes fixed on this growing vision. His mouth hangs slack, exaggerating his already not-alert facial expression as he says but a single, rapt word. “Madlantis!”
Ye gods.
Contrary to the old adage “Buy land… they’re not making it anymore,” immediately before us is proof that people are, indeed, making land. At least, Camille and Antonio are.
My parents had often mentioned a scheme. It was their stated ambition to resolve many of the globe’s most-dire problems with a single dramatic fix. Foremost in their minds was the swirling Sargasso of discarded postconsumer plastic known as the Pacific debris field. Second was global climate change. Third was the dwindling habitat available for wild bears of the polar variety, and fourth was the onerous burden of income taxes they were compelled to pay.
In truth, Gentle Tweeter, their income taxes occupied the lion’s share of my parents’ attention, but bear with me for the time being.
As a solution to all of these annoyances, Antonio and Camille Spencer had proposed a radical public works project. Even prior to my demise, they’d been busily lobbying world leaders. Like the master puppeteers they were, my mom and dad were shaping popular opinion toward their dream: to create a new continent—a vast floating raft of aerated polystyrene and bonded polymers, with a surface area double that of Texas. In this approximately mid-Pacific location, constantly shifting, perpetually growing, had been the aforementioned Pacific debris field, that far-reaching soup of plastic shopping bags and plastic water bottles and LEGO blocks, and every other bobbing, floating form of plastic refuse that’s been caught in the circling currents of the Pacific Gyre.
In the name of ecological restoration, my parents have spearheaded an international fund to meld together the ever-growing mass of plastic, and by churning this stew of Styrofoam, this morass of shredded cellophane… simply by partially melting it with injections of superheated air and introducing chemical bonding agents, they’ve reinvented this sodden ecological horror as a white confection. This synthetic wonderland covers millions of acres, heaped into gleaming mountains and spread in rolling hills where rainwater pools to form freshwater lakes and inland seas. This whipped-foam landscape floats, impervious to earthquakes, and rides high atop the worst tsunami. Its most striking quality is its pristine whiteness, a pearlized… an iridescent, immaculate whiteness, with the faintest suggestion of silver.
From a distance, it’s a heavenly paradise. Here are the baroque turrets and domes you imagine among cumulus clouds as you lie on your back in a Tanzanian meadow during Easter recess. Not that we celebrated Easter. Yes, I hunted for the requisite dyed eggs, but my parents told me these had been hidden by Barney Frank, who also furnished me an annual oversize basket of carob treats. Not that my mom ever allowed fatty, pig-pig me to actually eat that carob. Not that
In my folks’ puffed-plastic dreamscape, looming tall are white spires cresting above bowers of white roses, arches and buttresses, courtyards and gateways bright as spun sugar. It’s the white your tongue sees when you lick vanilla ice cream. Approaching the coastline of Madlantis you can discern white ravines and peaks. Before us are reconstituted plastics, seared by high-temperature blasts of air until they look polished. Glazed to glassy smoothness, these pinnacles and slopes aren’t subject to geological physics. In a dreamscape, a Maxfield Parrish arcadia: They rise impossibly steep, sheer faces of shining ivory that jut straight up from white beaches as slick as a mirror. Bright as klieg lights.
And yes, I might be a carob-gobbling, sucrose-addicted tubby, chubby dead girl, but I know the word
