Notes from Laxdale

This bog is full of disordered fragments. (con't from 23 Nov.)

Had my father lived to be the author of this story, it would undoubtedly have been very different. Now it is high time to reveal what surfaces in fairy rings, in all the knotted morelles and truffles and berries that were laid out on our dinner table.
To tell my story is not easy because most of its images are not visible to the naked eye. It is a story quite different from tangible scenes of violence, sexual or other kinds of physical abuse that people seem to easily understand. Insults are not always physical, nor are they contained in isolated sentences, word against word, evidence that cannot be used to hold up in court. To think that all that unavoidable filth still nourishes mushrooms, meadow grasses, wild flowers and berries.
Like original sin, many insults are subtly, insidiously, and manipulatively developed over decades and so passed on from generation to generation. I believe that the purpose of art is not to nourish these sins nor to sublimate them, but to lift them to the light for forgiveness.
To tell my story I must carefully unwind all the strands that connect frostbitten cranberries afloat in a bog that father revealed to us that day. Precious few are privy to witness the scrabble that these tiny fruits, like a myriad of uppercase and lowercase letters, compose in their natural habitat. Once embedded in the moss, it is quite a painstaking task to untangle all the delicate threads of deep red and purple letters that have grown and drifted so far apart. And yet this what I must do in order to decipher the original order of these words, the sense of my story, to fulfill the purpose of my own art and craft.
Treachery lies not in the silence of this pristine quagmire itself, but in the silence of those who have been seen this magic carpet and were at a loss to sit down and tell its story. Knowing that this thick green moss both dampens sound and conceals natural decay, I walk carefully upon it, bearing witness to unfolding fantasies without fear of an inevitable ripple, at a pace quick enough to avoid sinking. I am travelling on a magic carpet.