What the Village Left When It was Over

In the beginning, there was light and dark. In the light, we saw things, and remembered them, to give us comfort in the dark.



We dipped into the blood, and drew our memories on walls, so that when we died, others would remember them without having to see them.


Warnings against danger. Knowledge of when to plant. How to get back home. What to eat. When to run.

When the pictures couldn't convey our thoughts, we tried to say them. We hummed and grunted, we strung sounds into meanings. There were names given, and taken away. We remembered lines of noise to give our children at night, and our children remembered them to their children. Things we tried to say became songs, or threats, or stories.

Those sounds became solidified into letters, someone wrote them down once, combining the picture magic and the sound magic. The most powerful magic of all, the word magic. The magic that sticks around, that is recorded and referenced and stolen. The magic that gives you judgment, and influence. The power to create, to condemn and bless. Every one of us learned the magic, some better than others. We trained the fingers of babes, to become a nation of language.

We learned from the beginners and created more magic. Identifying ourselves. Identifying things and places and actions. It became a world of names, categorized into proper grammar and legislation and history. We learned to possess the world. It was beautiful in the first stages. We were graceful and powerful. There were storytellers.

But the word magic became aggressive. We labeled it all, the lands and the actions, they became countries and territories, specialized fields of power only select could enter, skills that defined our lives . We worked harder to be remembered. Be in control. Choose your definition. Have a label, or you are nothing. Create it, or you are nothing. Say it properly, or it doesn't exist.

We fought each other for the history, for the things we had identified, for the ideas we had made concrete with noun. My noun is better than your noun.

All this identity crowded around, pushing and grabbing the globe. Belong to the group with the same words as you, repeat those words again and again until they become action, and action becomes war, and war becomes empires, wins, sacrifices. We won and we lost, and the beginning people died with their inferior magic. Soo there were no more things to be said, it had all been uttered. The words then used us for interpretation, to add to themselves. They made us fight over the specifics, and in the fighting, one by one, we were pushed to the side by the greater power. The machine that swept across our world coagulating names items things into a vast tome of meaning, growing bigger and hungrier. Numerical bits in the hurling unfurling of the Collection, a magic that no longer needed our effort to grow, but instead fed itself without reason.


Almost as quickly as we invented it, we lost control of it. Suddenly, it was no longer our thoughts that mattered, but only the words themselves. We lost our names. Everything became a well worded mess, an eternal argument. Semantic invasion. Domination by definition.

Some people abandoned the words, to try and feel something besides their label, to be something beyond a definition. We knew we were dying, so we tried to find immortality in the old magics again. Only we had no blood, so we used manufactured dyes. It was only half of what we had known before, but we tried. It didn't stop the chaos. Being weaker than the Collection, it only served to feed what little power we conjured into more words, more analysis and review and tearing part of the spell at the seams. People were too busy struggling to stay on top of the words to look or listen. They wouldn't shut up.

Now we look again to the light and the dark, to try and understand the old fear of things we did not understand, the things that made us shiver. We try to use the words against the words themselves. It suddenly seems worse to know everything. It doesn't seem to fix anything. Taking away the Fear only made it necessary to create new ones.

The one word we failed to learn was .


More pictures here.

Wilson Middle: Someone Loved You Very Much Once

The first time we approached the building, the only way in was down a rickety ladder, into a moat, through half a knocked out window. The second time was also through a knocked out window, but this time I was wearing boots. The amount of courage I have is largely dependent on my footwear.


We circled the building greedily. Its amazing how much you used to want to get out of this building, but once its empty, you can't get in fast enough. The basement, by the way, was absolutely terrifying. The things I am most afraid of were there in force: unsure footing, complete darkness, basements. Even going into a lit one, in daylight, takes a gathering of emotion. It's why I do laundry so reluctantly. I was weak, standing at that grate, but they pulled me through. There wasn't a choice. If Atlantis rises from its watery grave, you don't stand there nervous about stepping down off a bookshelf into the blackness. Right, you suck up and do it. Otherwise you sit outside for hours while other people get better pictures than you.

Once we made our way into the shallower hells, the dimly lit first floor with it's rows of dead lockers, I could not get up those stairs fast enough. To the windows! The day was beautiful; breezes blowing in from the broken glass, brightly painted rooms, and furniture everywhere. How could anything be scary in this light?

Doesn't it make you want to climb on everything?

Or roller skate?

People who go hunting in abandoned places are summer school archaeologists. They want to find evidence of what used to be there, a place is better if it is preserved. They marvel at every disused telephone or nurse's eye chart like it was unearthed at Pompeii. Broken chairs are delightful, torn posters delicious. Giant stuffed dogs are Mayan fucking calendars.


Question and answer cards on the floor are a bread crumb trail to happiness.

Going into one old middle school is going into every middle school. It makes you old, young, and grabby at the same time. Every flashcard you see belongs to you and your 3rd grade math class, and so there's no compunction in picking it up. In factories there is a sense of otherness, that you weren't part of this industrial world, and therefore a proper amount of chaste respect is due. You don't just go leafing through machinery, and throwing the bits everywhere. But here you are just collecting those lost parts of your own grade school days that you've somehow misplaced, but found again.


We maintained a bit of decorum though, and left the really cool things. Because to take them all would ruin the place. If they stay where they are long enough, they will freeze there, like exhibits, glued with dust and paint chips.

Rocket Racer Test Report is a fabulous name, Tina. Also I like your car a lot. I like that it has a tail.

I also hate to read because it makes me happy. Also I hate witches cooking frogs. Or frogs about to eat witches.

Where did this sign come from exactly? Was it an encouragement note, or a reminder? And why are there not enough vocabulary game boards in my life anymore?

This makes me want a floor made entirely of colorforms.

Giant stuffed bunny.



More memories from Wilson can be found here.