December 4, 2007
ABCD
| MARK HARDING |
Anthropology
The elaborate pubertal ritual of the Wanscotutu tribe of the Farrago Islands required several days of fasting and much drunkenness. The High Priest would ceremonially initiate the newly recognised adults by blocking their ears with clay. This process was then repeated weekly throughout their lifetime, or until they began to develop deafness; this later event being declared a great blessing and a cause for feasting, and much drinking.
The only eyewitness account (D. Farrago, papers ibid.) has provided scholars the basis for two rival interpretations of this unique ritual:
1. Limitation. Once a member of the tribe had achieved adulthood—and therefore, in the belief system of the Wanscotutu, had attained the state of ‘knowing all that is to be known’ (farracoce)—his understanding of the speech of others was hindered so that his knowledge did not rival God and bring down His wrath upon the island.
2. Liberation. In what the tribe would regard as their perfect society of complete knowledge, the only thing in short supply is novelty. Accident becomes a necessity. On an island of impaired hearing, words become liberated: fluid, creative, frustrating.
There is speculation that the phonemes of the Wanscotutu language (wanscoforo) were constructed to create maximum ambiguity (wanscohoro—which also means allusiveness, or perhaps confusion).
The Practice of Structuralism,
Volker Schnitz,
Generative Books, 2005
Botany
Farrago’s Wainscot. Extinct by the end of the nineteenth century. A perennial, flowering herb, believed to be unique to the Farrago Islands. Attempts to grow from remaining seeds by experts at Kew and Missouri have failed. The flower was hermaphroditic, of rigid, fleshy growth, usually ten centimetres long and four centimetres wide, dark red in colour, shading to purple at the tip.
The aboriginal population of the, now uninhabited, islands would dry the plant in the sun prior to crushing. The product was consumed by adults in a type of broth with alcohol.
A Catalogue of Extinct Flora,
Marian van Koolenberg,
Unthank Books, 1979
Conspiracy
Was any man beset with such malevolence from his colleagues and superiors! It is apparent now that not only Professor Ween but also Lord Scott are assiduously contriving to have me removed from my position. I fear it is only a matter of time before they succeed. That the light of Truth should be so conspired against in England of all nations! Yet it is incomprehensible: why would my studies of these obscure islands call down such vindictiveness?
My love, I wish I could send you better news! But with the determination of the Navy to transport the natives and destroy of all plant life on the islands, my hopes of esteem and advancement are surely in ruins.
I sometimes think our happiness is doomed to be forever forestalled! I tell myself not to despair.
Paranoia and Academe in the 19th Century: A Symposium,
Alistair Mally,
University of Kentigern, 2002
Drug
After bolting the door, F__ breaks open the ampoule and mixes the substance into a glass with alcohol. He knocks back the tincture and lies down on the garishly coloured Axminster.
Silence. Darkness.
Then he sees . . .
Somehow, someway, his life—from birth to present—flows before him. Everything recalled. He relives the terror and humiliation and love of his childhood. He relives every book he has ever read, every newspaper article, every conversation, every glance at the poor or the rich, the weak or the powerful. Fact, fantasy, half-truth, lie, myth and guess: he holds them all in his mind. He sifts and weaves them.
And he understands . . .
Homo sapiens sapiens. The tangle of money and power emerges like a web seen in the dew. With a single deep breath, he could blow it all away.
He sees he can change everything. He just has to decide what to change first.
And he returns . . .
With a perceptible bump, F__ feels the weight of his body on the floor. He listens to the blood roaring in his ear as it rests against the carpet, he listens to the din of the woodworm greedily chewing the floorboard, the mice clattering behind the wainscot.
The noises of the room grow louder, amplify, echo; bounce from skull-side to skull-side. But he doesn’t shut the sounds out, he doesn’t want to. He’s fascinated.
His last rational thought is of the reasons behind the islanders’ deafness. As his mind collapses into the scuttling of mice, he can’t help but be amused.
Nightsight,
P. G. Hodge,
Worddog Books, 2006
Mark Harding lives. He works. He loves. He has a site at m.a.harding.googlepages.com, which covers some of the living part.