1. The day had been long and pleasant and I was dozing off in the early evening to the sound of leaves rustling. The wind would come around the side of the house and blow through the karaka trees…
I’ve always been incredibly drawn to the internal world – my own and those of others – and for a long time I held a view that those unexplainable emotional revelations we all experience could not be congruous with a scientific or logical world. In a time when so much emphasis is placed on the gathering of information to attain understanding of all that is human, I found myself wanting to touch the idea of where emotion and logic might meet, but not grab a hold of it too tightly. The clinical aspects incorporated into the story embody the essence of our intently “progression”-focussed, technological age, and the human passions, inconsistencies, and flaws on display are meant to characterise the more ephemeral side of life.
I love the sun, and I love to be warm, but being from the North of England (twenty-six years there) and subsequently moving to Wellington, New Zealand (nine years here), I’ve found myself (*put myself) in predominantly chilly climes, let’s call them. However, the last two years have seen me taking a back seat from regular employment, giving me time to indulge in my writing and make sure that I’m positioning myself in the right hemisphere at the right time of year to soak in consecutive summers. Thus in this story, I found myself naturally sliding towards the main event playing out in a hot, balmy environment, exploring human heat and technical frigidity.
In essence, this story is a relationship study as old as time, offset by an unfamiliar backdrop of scientific advancement. It seeks to explore how these two discordant elements of emotion and logic can affect one another, and because of their seeming contradictions, make for a compelling but still essentially human portrayal.
DANIEL FREARS is a musician and writer living in beautiful Aotearoa. His poetry and prose have appeared in Salient, Shabby Doll House, and miniMAG. Find him on Instagram @drearsfortears.
