Shed
Below begins a piece written for the never-was SUMMERLAND, 2018. It has gone unpublished in the depths of my hard-drive. It is accompanied by a reader in the form of footnotes. Humour me, humour yourself, you are 16 in English class and for the first time you engage with a text fully.
A poem, prose, text. Time to read has died and with it the mind of a goldfish rules as we feed with social feeds. Remember education. The one book, poem, prose, text you enjoyed in school. You hated it. It was difficult, hard, but the class worked through it week by week, sentence by sentence, line by line. You learned, you understood, you were surprised. Insight, magic, uncovered treasure. Treasured. Decipher a while, codebreak, a plane which we re-read upon. There are more planes yet, but here, take time. Read.
Not once has skin peeled back like tetanus flakes aged as the scar, once billowing flesh[1] held together like a putrid toy chest.[2] Yet, the art-form[3], in its own right, is tarred — or some would say — elevated by craft title-ship.[4] Look to the Ainu salmon, a celebration, a reclamation.[5] Pulsing silence, a cellar door.[6] Each salmon is taken with the tender most care, not an ounce disrespected, but reborn.[7] The winter piercing through polycotton, vantablack surround, ever open door.[8] Swollen organ pressed to skull cracks and bleeds out in its expansion.[9] Glazed retina glint captures eyes incarcerated to a hutch dormant in terror.[10] Unsurviving medusa fossils, lucky in their euthanasia shatter, are the envy of neurosis.[11] Rotate thoughts detached from axis spin in vertigo.[12] Changeling. The town where my blood cannot refuse.[13] A story, novel truth.[14] Compassion blinds eyes but not stigmata rigor mortis in perpetual crucifixion.[15] Never a linguistic possibility of expressing true sight.[16] A scar for which I would take cataracts.[17]A solo rotation of Kodak Carousel vision, archive footage preserved in near perfect conditions.[18] Gillian’s screams brought her own demise, compliant consumption, childhood carrier for myxomatosis.[19] Atheism could not grant absolvement. The poppy flower brought many down below.[20] A jelly belly, adolescent recollections turn darker, an excellent host.[21] Instinct does not allow for flavour.[22] Iron oxide.[23]
The animal that hung bleeding was a hare, shot by my father. I was unaware of it, we had moved my pet rabbit into the shed for winter warmth. I ran down the garden to visit it. Terrified, he scowled at me hidden in darkest corner of the hutch. I turned to see what he scowled at, the hare hung facing my rabbit, eyes locking with him. The next day I ate with my family, halfway through I was asked if I enjoyed the stew, then to be told it was rabbit.
Additional Post-pre-face, 2020
The piece is from a vivid and recurring nightmarish but compelling memory I have from being a young girl, going to visit my pet rabbit, Flopsy, at the bottom of the garden. His hutch was put into the shed for cold Scottish months to stop him freezing to death or being eaten by foxes. I spent a little time looking at him cowering in the back right corner of his hutch, he never did like me much, evidenced by bites and numerous attempts to escape. But, never had he acted with such fear with hating eyes directed at me, in fact, I had never seen him look at me before. A side glance, I turned to see what at and dropped a bag of feed at my feet. By the ears hangs a dead, shot, hunted rabbit, facing the hutch. This is the first I remember learning of my dad’s shooting hobby. The face has stuck with me all my life, reminiscent of the book I was reading for English class at that time, The Changeling by Robin Jenkins, which speaks of the ‘humane’ murder of a rabbit with myxomatosis. Flopsy was later found dead with a similar, but more peaceful version of this unfateful hanging hare’s expression after a combination of a wasp sting and constant fox torment. I always thought strangely of his ‘pet’ status, well at least now I’m vegetarian.
Reader
[1] Flakes of paint and metal which peel off of an aging fence, relating to a large scar on my thigh from slicing through flesh on a rusted wheelbarrow age 9
[2] Loss of innocence, imagery built from what sights are to come
[3] Skinning of a dead animal
[4] The debate and controversy of the term ‘craft’ in art
[5] Japanese indigenous people, Ainu, who make shoes, clothing etc. from salmon skin, without any part wasted or unused — my own debate between upbringing and vegetarianism
[6] Sudden broken theme to imagery of sights to come, a memory which breaks into reality, Donnie Darko darkness thematics, Edgar Allen Poe The Raven joke
[7] Ainu, ibid.
[8] Broken imagery back to memory, creates tumultuous reading, panicked pacing, a cold winter night through clothing, Anish Kapoor’s blackest black, nothing seen in memory except image of open door referring to The Raven
[9] Imagery quickens pace with tightness of typewriting spacing (as piece was originally formatted) into violence and gore to express rawer emotion. Memory is so awful that it creates a headache echoing what was seen, pressure on brain causes it to explode from head
[10] The sight is seen, eyes glazed over like cataracts which glimmer in light, these dead eyes are forever bound in their stare across to a rabbit hutch with terrified animal inside
[11] Compared to into Medusa’s eyes, those who were spared the memory as they turned into stone and shattered, my psychological damage is jealous of this quick death
[12] A change of thought pattern, making the reader almost dizzy, like my own problems with vertigo
[13] ‘The Changeling’ by Robin Jenkins, which I read looking near the same time as this memory is bound into the memory forever by a violent rabbit scene. The book features Dumbarton, the town where I am from and struggled with
[14] The book, but also humour in any memory which becomes trivial
[15] The compassion of death makes this animal blind but not me, who saw it hanging, nailed to the wall in my shed, bleeding. In childhood innocence/hubris I compared it to Jesus on the cross, who’s face always haunted me and my catholic guilt.
[16] I will never be able to truly express what I saw and what is remembered
[17] I would rather be blinded than remember it so vividly, also refers back to the glint in the eye and the scar on my leg
[18] Memories are often shown in photographs, think aunties showing slides on an old Kodak Carousel of their trip to Niagara Falls, preserving these slides forever, just as my memory. Also in relation to slides I recently stole from a university archive but have kept poorly and damaged.
[19] The Changeling pp. 82–82 & 230 A young girl, Gillian screams as the group of children discover a rabbit infected with myxomatosis, she screams, “kill it!” multiple times as the protagonist bludgeons it to death with a rock poorly, a grim and gruesome end
[20] Gillian’s guilt and sin, even as a child we are not innocent in today’s age. Even an atheist goes to hell. Innocence of a flower brought with it heroin
[21]Imagery of my father, a jovial man I was scared of as a child, loud dinner parties, a shotgun, hunt for sport. Death for fun
[22] I always thought of eating meat as instinct, the sudden trend for the paleo diet — justification — we are meat eaters. Hannibal Lector found delight in the refined taste of men. Where draw the line
[23] The compound of blood. The scar on my thigh made by a piece of iron.
