‘Seven Strains—and a Tritone’
— Joyce Chong
One week before the debris disappeared, the truck poured. The earthquake never took place. The pond persisted. Maybe the debris had never been dumped. Which part of what never happened didn't happen?
This week, I have a wonderful piece from the latest issue of Diagram by Alina Stefanescu that explores and blends history with folklore and myth and magic. A recollection and retelling of both personal history and local myth, all anchored by a single location. How a place can accumulate a sort of power of its own as time passes, collected histories and traumas lending a magic of its own.
Road masticating infamous statues. Heroes losing their heads. My father helping a neighbor find her teeth in the rubble. Dentures from Bulgaria.
What’s even more fascinating about this story is its ties to origin, how it informs the history of a family, the movement of bodies and bloodlines across an ocean. These concepts are blended so seamlessly within this story, weaving between the past, it shifts and contrasts the proximity of family history against further, more distant legends. As Stefanescu so aptly mentions in the notes, superstition shares syntax with facts—and marvel tunnels within the marrow.
Peasants said things. Ploughmen swore blizzards could not freeze the pond. Rainstorms failed to add to its waters. The pond stayed the same despite drought.