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Notes:
1. Made on February 9th, 2013
2. Using a 3DS
3. And the stop-motion software built into it
4. And then using imovie to add the music, and reverse it
5. Unfortunately there’s a boring 30 seconds in the middle of it
6. That I should have edited out
7. The music is Pipe Down Jules Verne, by Vom Vorton
The monks were sat in the monkery, each one settled comfortably upon their egg. It was almost hatching time and the monkery was filled with an air of tense excitement and the pungent stench of outright fear. This could be it, at any moment. This could be the end.
The end of the egg.
And the beginning of what came after.
But what came after none of the monks knew, for it was not in the teachings and it was not in the books and it wasn’t even in the stained glass windows that bathed them all in a pallid rainbow of dead light.
It was a mystery.
And monks hated mysteries.
“Same time next week, hey lads?” one of the monks shouted, but none of the others laughed. The chief monk would have issued a stern rebuke to the monk with his cane but it was too late for that because even the chief monk was perched on his egg and not even he dared move and so he sat there in silence with all the other monks rather than striding across the monkery’s floor and striking that impudent monk’s head down onto the cobbles with a single swish of his staff and then further striking the head and occasionally the cobbles in his pitiless fury as he really wanted to do and as the situation surely demanded.
The silence stretched out
and out
seeming to fill the great hatching hall with its immensity
or with its void
if a void could ever be said to fill anything
which it couldn’t
the monks knew
for that was in the teachings and in the books
but not in the stained glass windows
for how could you represent a void in the medium of painted glass
You couldn’t, that’s how
You couldn’t at all
Not without just painting it black
and negating the art itself
and the form
and the very meaning of the term itself.
The bell tolled. The monks all craned their heads in unison towards the clocktower, and then turned them back again. Stared straight ahead. Stared into nothing and at no-one. Beneath them sat the eggs. Beneath them sat an unknown world.
The monks waited. Shivered. Waited, waited.
The eggs stirred. Pulsed. Began to hatch.
The monks, having waited so long, discovered they had no time to understand what was happening. And then it was too late and there was nothing left for them to do and nothing left for them to be and the new monks feasted on their bodies from below and slivered into their forebears habits and donned their cowls and made their way, bloodied and beautiful, into the chancel, where they would be granted their absolution and with it eggs of their own.
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Notes:
1. Written on July 26th, 2016
__________My granddad used to do this egg trick when he came round on the weekend. He’d line three eggs up on the table, in these brown plastic egg cups we had, and then he’d say, which one of these eggs is the chicken in, and we’d point to one of the eggs, and he’d slam his hand down onto the egg, causing it to explode, and he’d say, no, it wasn’t that one, pick another, and we’d pick another, and he’d smash that one too, and there’d be yolk all over the table now, and bits of shell hanging off his hand, and egg white covering everything like slime, and then he’d point to the last egg and say, do you think it’s in this one then, and we’d say yes, it has to be, and he’d slam down his hand, and blood would spurt out everywhere, and feathers, and bones, and he’d slowly lift his hand up, and you could see a beak embedded in his palm, with blood in a circle round it, egg trick stigmata, and then he’d look down in exaggerated horror at all the blood and bones and sickening mess and say, see, no, it wasn’t in that one either, you don’t get chicks in eggs, not these eggs anyway, eggs from the shop are unfertilised, and none of us could tell if it was a trick or not but he’d do it every week and it was always the last egg and now he’s dead from un egg related causes and we’ll never find out the truth of the egg trick
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Notes:
1. Written on September 3rd, 2018
__________I was watching the footballs and every time they kicked the footballs the footballs split into two and soon the whole pitch was covered in footballs and yet still the children kept kicking them and they kept splitting into more and more footballs and slowly I realised they weren’t footballs at all but eggs and the eggs were laying eggs and the children were farming the eggs for their egg businesses all the kids had egg businesses now it was a very competitive field
Final Score: Egg 4-2 Sub Egg
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Notes:
1. Written on June 17th, 2016
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