Sophie Ward: An Inexplicable Journey

(Images from Paper Castle Press, painting of Sophie Ward by Danny Roberts on Igor & Andre)

An old love but nonetheless still relevant. If HSC English journeys (to all the pre-2008 oldies) made you suicidal, this is the complete opposite.

Sophie Ward is no model stereotype. Sister to the infamous Gemma Ward, this beauty is all brains.

I remember discovering her self-created press (Paper Castle Press) and book "The Beginning of an Inexplicable Journey" years and years back. Probably around the time of my HSC, actually. This is the only when the word journey can be used in conjunction with something positive. 

I love the way she writes, it reveals the power of ambiguity and the extension of human imagination.

Definitely check out her thought-provoking blog! She's real deep.

To friends who are reading this, I want her book for Christmas!

Here is the beginning to her book. Enjoy!

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WHAT I REMEMBER,

BEFORE I BEGAN

Whispering, a breathing out laugh.

I watched his heart beat under his belly button,

under taut marbled boy skin, skin veined blue and white.

I looked at the curve of  his calf, that beautiful flip

upwards from his ankle, his smooth, pale skin luminous

over collated ribs. I saw his hand reaching out away from

him, experiencing threads of  sand fall through fingertips,

blinded by closed eyelids. This is what I remember of  him,

Oscar asleeping, awake to the world.

Pink lightning, or a hallucination.

Constellation of  Luna park lights.

Warm water on my ankles, trekking through beach jungle.

White green moss on vine strangled boulders

clamped with fern.

A ghost man swimming on the horizon.

Golden sand, bluegreen water.

Her brown, oiled body an extension of  the beach

half  naked.

The line of  red blood, stationary, on her ankle. The red

reformed after the wash of  the ocean, seeping  quietly red

in the sea, of  the sea.

A beautiful surfer boy, startled.4

Uncoloured sand and magnified sunlight

before a grey approaching drizzle.

The grit of  the beach, the bite of  the breeze.

Men, and t-shirts.

An old surf  champion jogging with the memories of  his

youth to kneel before churned white wash and lead sky.

Cloud like matted sheep wool, shorn and spread,

juicing the sunlight through and through.

Learner surfers scattered and split up the beach.

Inky black spider children in wetsuits

churning up circles of  sand.

Our shortbread bodies, coconut oil.

The sugar silt sand.

Night driving in the smudged wet warm

of  a meandering summer quiet.

Glossy, sweet rain.

The rumble of  glass in a bin dragged over ground.

The dome of  blue sky, deeper to light.

Ripped pumpkin flowers in a milky sink.

Awakened contact.

Long long hours of  light.

Storms brewing