evidentiary:alchemy

Fragment from my final manuscript for Antioch/unpublish book, Last Seen:

When archaeologists excavated the Sutton Hoo burial mounds near Suffolk, England, they started with the smaller barrows. Though they predicted the biggest mound was most important – and likely contained the most valuable artifacts – they dug the smaller ones first as a way to figure out the structures; to find an excavation process that would minimize damage and mistakes. Inside the small mounds they found bone fragments, the decayed remains of a coffin, and corroded pieces of metal with the imprints of tapestries long since rotted away.

Imagine the pressure of the soil, the weight of time, that it can push fabric into metal, like a stamp.

Before digging into the large mound, they built timber terracing to keep it from collapsing, and each layer was worked by hand, the soil brushed gently away. Deep inside – just deep enough so robbers missed the treasure more than once – they found clench nails held still for hundreds of years, and surrounding the nails, a black dust. Nails and black dust were all the archaeologists needed. When the sand was completely removed, the imprint of an entire ship was revealed, as individual as a fingerprint. From this, they drew plans and reconstructed the ship.

- Fragment from my unpublished book, Last Seen

Writers - especially creative nonfiction writers - sometimes need to excavate the smaller barrows first.  And in this sense, context becomes a kind of strategy - something we use to reimagine meaning and restructure narrative arcs. 

For example, I once wrote an essay about a lover who overdosed on heroin.  I knew he was shooting up when we were dating, but I had never really dealt with my feelings surrounding his abuse - his reasons for doing it, the way it tore us apart, my own complicity.  Where to begin? 

I did not begin with the quality and character of our relationship.  I did not begin with my grief.  Or my guilt.  Or the heroin.  I began with sweet, sensual details, the things that made me smile when I remembered him.  And when I was ready, I moved into the sensuality of the heroin.  And then the grief.  Later, my complicity and guilt.  As I moved through these emotional contexts, the narrative changed - structurally, emotionally, psychologically.  The context was quite literally changing the facts. 

In other words, context is not something that exists permanently or statically.  It shifts and settles like sediment.  And when it shifts, your memories shift along with it.