The White Sail: Notes on Myth, Colonial Legacies, and Navigating Settler-Colonial Positionality.

At the meeting point – where oceans and soils coalesce, where seas-siders simmer on the

sidelines – a ghostly figure persists. Beyond this beachside panorama, refracting on the horizon, The White Sail looms. It summons and berates, each shadow a lure.

The grip of its charisma, its easy-going eye, embraces and confines. The sweetly scent of the aged oak mast gifts the sugar-high.

Swaying softly, soundlessly, as the sun reaches its climax – The White Sail comforts fabrication. Saline blonde, pretty as a crescent moon, a quintessential fallacy – land Ho!


…


An image haunting and archaic yet decorated on our two-cents. Disguised in synchronous
denial / imperial imprints / misguided possession. The White Sail exists anxiously, separated from the motherland, weeping in isolation. It pervades the omnipotent picture book – with fluffy transcripts on stale parchment, the enigmatic other scrapbooked as exotic new discovery.






To acknowledge my own fallacy – a partaker of tricks and tattle-tales: 1) Transmute feelings
of futility – throw away the fruitless pastime of fingertips gnawed hollow 2) Mourn the realisation – comfort heaviness in the ribcage/heavy-weights in the spine 3) Melt into The White Sail, the commonplace dress-code 4) Drown and overflow (trip hazard, broken big toe).


Still, I ache in the non-resolution, how can I feel at home in this displacement? This so- called-no-mans-land? Such feelings swallowing and engulfing won’t remain for long. Morose and morbid emotive expressions, mine for just a moment. But how I feel it’s swollen occupation: like throbbing paracetamol-prone/ice-pick to the chest (poisoned unrest). Mine
for just a moment.


Each step in this terrain is a torrid quicksand. Each moment forward consumes me, like tide
at dusk – enveloping the scintillating stars of broken seashells and eroded earths.







day of spring) the sickly-sweet honey lust of ignoranceisbliss escapes me. Force-fed romantical beach bleach prototypes – the slippery-dip burnt rubber surf-chic fantasy roses my vision. I am told to feel at ease when this mythic veil impends. It smothers fidelity, it crushes critique, imposes its notions of the ivy-tinted other. The desirable savage, archaic but eternal. The shadow-skinned, almond eyed, sun-spotted, raven-haired figures of the behind-the- scenes. Erased by the violent look, Embraced by the second glance.


…


The White Sail haunts the grounds of this cemetery. Seen but never seen. Present but seldom acknowledged. Invisible but not erased.

As the sea fades to black, The Sail drifts close to shore. Translucent canvas reflects its fictitious cerulean stage. Its almighty presence a mere myth too. I follow in its path, grounded by the cool wet sand beneath me. I feel the ache of this torment, its luminous silhouette a magnet, a trance-inducing spell.

I scale its fluid fractured body, sinking in deeper and deeper. Submerged in the mystic seabed, I let the waves overtake me. Each tender swell carrying me to where I need to be. Sirens moan and weep, the keepers of deep-sea secrets and malicious myths (a burden heavies a heart). My limbs blue and swollen - I call for Gentle Zephyr – allow my sweet return, lay me down to rest.

(Coming to terms, and the journey is long. Rest your weary soul, rest your tiresome limbs. Comfort possibility, ease into the pages.)







Inspo:

Hage, G. (2003). Against paranoid nationalism: Searching for hope in a shrinking society. Pluto Press

Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and

Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press.