“The Woodlands Outside The Finishing Plant”

I think I wrote this originally in about 2018. I can date my writing by it's relationship to sensation. The story being filled with overwhelming tiny moments and a romantic preoccupation with death marks it as something I wrote while dealing with cessation symptoms. I know I spent a lot of time in 2018 just sitting in public places, right on the border of falling apart. In woodlands, in the dead edges of Newcastle, looking at the river or the sea.

I'm glad to read this again now. I'm thinking a lot about parades and sacrifice at the moment, though as revisiting older stories has shown, I never really stopped thinking about those.

“The Woodlands Outside The Finishing Plant”

1 the sacrifice

It is debatable how much use I am. It is in fact constantly being debated. I can hear my use-value being considered by at least one person at almost any moment when I care to listen. That is maybe a little self centred, the use being debated is never just mine, but rather how I might be useful in combination with some political event or ecological principle. However, as I am bumped along corridor after corridor of rot-smelling wood, a damp sack over my head cutting out all light but the periodic LED light of security panels as we pass bulkheads at kilometer intervals, it feels very personal.

2 the court

We are waiting to eat. We have been waiting for a long time, countable in years if not decades. We sit here in the open space carved out from thick forest by an unusually rocky area of soil subsequently scorched and polluted with chemicals. Looking up, as we were oft to do in the early years, we can see a clear night sky encircled with the tops of conifers. A passing comet crosses on a curve and offers a reminder of the original celestial event which caused this scarred little pore to break up the roll of green. At last we hear the lock rods of the shipping container slide back and figures emerge from the earth.

3 the sacrifice

The tunnel slopes upward and the walk becomes more painful as I bang more frequently against supporting bars, or trip on rough and slippery ground. The sack slips as I fall and billows full of air ripe with the scent of white mold and healthy bacteria. I see my hands briefly in front of me as a I fall, tied crossed at the wrist with pink, green and yellow ribbons. I feel the ground thud into the palm of the hand tied lowest and the cap of the knee on the same side. The ground has a thin layer of mud and is comprised of fragments that feel like ground up pieces of plastic. I am helped up as I hear someone opening a door.

4 the court

The procession steps out from the shadows of the trees in the star-lit clearing, we see the the silhouette of one break off to crouch by a small generator near buried in fallen needles. We feel the radiation as the power source is engaged, it lights up tracks of nerves in our bodies which are so long out of use as to feel vestigial. We feel ourselves differently, just as a blast of cold water might make us aware of extremities we had taken for granted and forgotten. A switch sends power to overlapping trails of lanterns in the trees five metres or so up. The night sky made like warm ink within this circle of light.

5 the sacrifice

The air feels sharp and the ground feels warm. I’d been underground walking for so long that the sensations of coming up to the surface was just a confused collision of events which ended with the bang of a large metal door behind me. Cold pine breeze and dizzying feeling of space between tree trunks. I am lost in thought and then a small noise and I am coaxed forward by the arms that hold me and then I reflexively glance up as light appears above and through the fabric I can just see a halo. I am helped forwards until I am near the middle of this circle of orange light, still looking up when the hood comes off.

6 the court

In the light we look at ourselves. Each different but still indistinguishable. The entourage has brought the witness to the middle of our circle and has now politely backed away leaving them with hands gesturally bound in the colours of the stomach. The witness is here only to see, to consume and be consumed only symbolically. We can now begin to create the new sovereign who will go on walking these woods like those before, worshipped by that other community at the far end of the tunnel until they return to us. Their arrival tells us we have grown fat enough, and that the last queen is now dead. Our hunger is electric in these moments of anticipation.

7 the sacrifice

I look around at the creatures that sit just in side the edge of the treeline. Each is raised up on a warn table of glassy stone and they are near covered in dead pine needles, cobwebs, sap, and dirt. The smell of pine hangs over everything but an acid sweetness rises up between the sparse gusts of wind. I watch as needles are shed while figures move with a slow calmness towards and across one another. Mouths open and then close around part of passing body, teeth barely seen. The pageantry continues and the gestures become more elaborate and more is bitten away leaving silhouettes abscised, raw and bleeding.

8 the court

We begin, bodies aching at first but remembering with each step and letting pain fall away to practiced flourish and gesture. We take from each of us and become lighter and reshaped, years of static growth pared back revealing a new whole and new parts. Our stomachs shift to accommodate our new outline and to hold all the pieces of ourselves we have carefully bitten off. We move in euphoric knots, slick with blood and thinned sap and the waxy bacteria cells of an uncountable number of nameless others which are nevertheless vital players in this performance. “We” is such a small word to account for so many.

9 the sacrifice

It is impossible to keep track of what I am seeing. I turn slowly and stupidly on the spot, tied hands held across my belly, eyes barely focusing on the scene which moves with such precision. The smell is intoxicating and I feel dizzy. A meridian must have been passed because the dance changes. Pieces of flesh are delicately regurgitated, squeezed from each mouth and now carried in the flow of knots. Chewed proto-body-parts held between limbs which roll and twist, pressing into form a new additional creature between them, slick with bile and flecked with spores. The original circle retreats, now so slight. The new figure sits before me.

10 the court

We lose all and gain more than could be positively expressed. Ecstatic exhaustion smears time and thought as lichen drives across stone. Everything has been made thin but now our consciousness thickens back to where can can see the new sovereign which we have made. They sit before us, us but not us, watching the witness who has seen all of their birth. We feel tired, and the breeze feels sharp on our newly shaped bodies. Dust and needles and small insects begin to adhere to us and senses dull beneath their protection. The Queen shakily walks out of the circle. The witness finally shuts off the generator as they leave for the tunnel.