“At a hotel in West Papua, New Guinea, above my bed in room 104, there hangs a painting. Three horses—cream, chestnut, and honey brown—gallop through pinkish-orange shallows. The sky—of a warmer, flooded world?—is goldenrod. Each horse, though wingless, looks as if it might take flight, especially the white one, who rears up with a pained expression in his eyes and bares his baby teeth. All three have steeled themselves, are focused—on what? What lies ahead? Will they ever find sanctuary? Distracted and anxious for weeks, I’ve written almost nothing; hoping to be shocked into inspiration, tomorrow I leave for Raja Ampat, an archipelago comprised of more than fifteen hundred remote karst islands, where I will dive among the world’s most biodiverse reefs. Their coral, their longnose hawkfish, will be dead soon: the pH of the oceans is falling. On such a planet, why live a writing life? Civilization can’t last much longer—my poems and essays aren’t for posterity. But neither should they be solely self-stimulating. Beauty, discovering it for oneself and sharing it with others, is as essential for the soul as glucose is for the brain. My room’s A/C rattles. It stirs the peeling wallpaper, which is actually gift wrap. The painting above my bed, signed only by the name ‘Putra,’ is both warning and inspiration. It is a Tarot card: Fear Death by Water, it says. The cosmic ocean never ends.”
—Greg Wrenn, author of Centaur (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013)
Photo credit: Pak Han