James Callan

“MY WORLD”

He makes me smile. He makes me laugh. He makes me pull my hair, shake my head, grind my teeth.

He makes demands. He ignores my own. He runs when I say come. He laughs when I shout. Sometimes he cries. He eats the snack. Not the meal. He eats pasta without a fuss. Greens, they’re out of the question.

One time it took me forty-five minutes to get him into the car. The journey to the supermarket was ten. Was it worth it?

He says the darndest of things. It has always been said that they do. But he does. He says the darndest of things.

He makes me remember what it used to be like to think I didn’t get enough sleep. Back then, when I did. I really, really did.

He makes me feel like my life is complete. He makes me feel joy as I never knew I could. He makes me so sad with his laughter, the way the sun catches his hair which has never been cut. Each birthday cuts my heart like a wound, fills me entirely with warmth. He makes me melt and moan and feel powerless in the throes of my overbearing love for him. He makes me better. He makes me proud. He makes my world a brighter place. He is, full stop, my world.

He is my friend. He is my greatest achievement. He is my little boy. And he is absolutely beautiful.

"VORACIOUS WEEDS AND STARLIGHT”

Deadly  nightshade  is  a  voracious  weed.  Poisonous  too.  But  so  easy  to  pull  out. Satisfying.  The  roots  give  way  under  very  little  strain  and  come  out  of  the  ground, almost  willingly.  The  pigs  and  goats  and  cows  ignore  them  wholesale.  So  really,  I wasn’t  altogether  fussed.  Let  them  grow.  Let  them  be.  I’ll  get  to  them.  Eventually. Maybe.

They  brushed  up  against  my  calves,  my  knees,  my  thighs,  these  voracious  and poisonous weeds. Their leaves and fuzzy stalks tickled me in the darkness as I walked under the night sky in the open field. Looking upward at all those stars, the thousands -the  millions?- of  them;  it  was  as  if  the  gods  up  in  their  celestial  sphere  had  cast  a multitudinous rage of luminescent confetti across the heavens. An absolute smattering of  spectacular  pinprick  radiance.  Like  light  catching  the  pockmarked  pits  of  Zeus’ acne scars, a luster of youth that was.

I  got  lost  in  that  image.  All  those  stars.  The  thousands.  The  millions.  I  stood  in the  open  field  and  stared  for  five,  ten  minutes.  I  went  down  the  deep  rabbit  hole  of thoughts, looking up at those countless bits of light. Contemplated issues and concepts far too large and grand to grasp with anything but the loosest of grips.

The  infinite  nature  of  space.  The  endless  cosmos.  The  boundless  expanse  of black  and  the  limitless  continuation  of  more  and  more  and  more  beyond  that.  It  was staggering and all too much. In those brief moments when you think about such things and  know  the  enormity  of  what  you  contemplate.  It  is  fleeting.  Those  blips  of knowing,  of  grasping  concepts  beyond  the  confines  of  our  tiny  selves.  Still,  in  those micro-moments of understanding the weight of it all... it is worthy, I should think, to merit a full-fledged swoon.

And  I  did.  More  or  less.  Swoon.  I  had  to  look  away.  Away  from  all  of  that infinite  splendor,  from  the  great  majestic  night  sky  and  its  cascade  of  glittering jewels. I was reeling and short of breath. Dazzled. And in the end, invigorated. I  felt  my  heart  pumping.  Confirming  my  living  state  and  the  excitement  stirred within.  To  feel  this  small,  in  this  open  field,  under  the  stars—it was  life-affirming.

Yes, I could feel my heart pumping its great palpitations. I could feel each chamber working to send out life and vitality to my limbs and far reaches. The quartet piece of percussion,  hammering  away  to  the  beat  of  its  own  drum.  My  heart.  My  center. Laboring to keep me alive.

Oh, and I felt alive. I suddenly could not contain the energy the stars seemed to transfer from the night sky to me. To stand idle was inconceivable. So I ran. And all those voracious  weeds,  nightshade  and  thistle and dandelion and burdock;  they all parted for me in the wake of my energetic burst. They parted for me like the Red Sea did for Moses, and here, right now, to me, it felt like something of biblical importance.

I ran until  the  field came  to  an  end  so  I  turned around  to  run  some  more.  And then, abruptly, just as earlier I had run down the deep rabbit hole of thoughts, I sadly, quite  literally,  ran  down  a  deep  rabbit  hole.  My  ankle  caught  and  twisted  and  a lightning bolt of pain shot up my leg and I filled the quiet night with a rather shrill cry of woe and self pity. I tasted dirt - and blood - from where my face impacted with the ground,  a  result  of  my  sudden  fall  at  such  speed.  I  pulled  my  foot  loose  from  the abysmal  doom  that  is  the  front  door  to  those  -like  the  nightshade- voracious  pests. Those damned rabbits.

And I got up.

I  was  lucky.  It  wasn’t  that  bad.  It  could  have  been  worse.  Should  have  been worse.  I  was  foolish  and  silly  and  a  minor  tweak  of  my  ankle  is  something  such behavior  perhaps  deserves.  As  consequence.  As  a  lesson  learned.  Or  simply  just cause. Whatever. 

I guess I was a bit like Icarus. Except I didn’t fly too close to the sun. My wings didn’t  melt.  I  didn’t  fall  from  the  sky  to  my  doom.  I  just...  ran  too  fast,  in  the  dark, and the gods, looking down on me from all of those scintillating bits of light—they put me in my place.

I  brushed  the  dirt  off  my  trousers  and  shirt.  I  spat  the  lingering  taste  of  blood upon  the  weeds  around  me.  I  walked  -  not  ran  -  back  across  the  field  to  the  warm glow of my home on the other side of the paddock. 

Tomorrow  I’ll  make  a  real  effort  to  pull  out  those  weeds.  I’ll  take  care  of  the nightshade. Do something about those pests. I’ll do it. Tomorrow.

And of course when tomorrow became today, I still used tomorrow as the perfect excuse  to  wait.  That’s  the  thing  about  these  night  skies,  the  bright  days  that  follow.

They loop in an endless exchange of  dark and  light.  A twirling dance of  diurnal  and nocturnal.  A  spinning  coin  of  two  contrasting  sides.  Yet  the  coin  never  falls.  Bets need never be placed. That coin will spin long after I live and die and rot and become the  compost  needed  for  a  healthy  new  crop  of  deadly  nightshade,  thistle,  dandelion, and burdock to take root. And those roots entwined in the rich humus provided by my demise will support a network of voracious weeds to feed the pests that burrow in the fields. They will do so under the spectacle of a brilliant night sky. They will also do so under the warm and welcome light of the sun Icarus had striven to take for himself.

It was a comforting thought, oddly. I found myself asleep in no time at all.

James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. At the end of 2020 he left work to become a full-time father.