Photo by Andrea England
Email From Canada By Andrea England
It!s hard to un-know something once you know it. It!s also hard to un-know someone.
did not think about it that way — as a flak jacket — until I wrote it down just now. Before now, it was just a throw; but on the page, it has become a metaphor. Some people don!t like metaphors, by the way: they like plain language. If you are one of those people, I am probably not for you. I like connecting the dots, finding the why, revealing the what and the how. Like Earnest Buckler"s protagonist David Canaan, in Buckler!s The Mountain and the Valley, #saying it exactly” provides me with some comfort. And the illusion of control. But that’s where the similarity ends. And we both know, there is no underestimating the power of illusion; in fact, I wear my blanket even when I ought not to
I don!t know who I am exactly; it!s a memory I am trying in this very minute to recall. I!m hoping, as I write, that it — she — comes back to me. I do know where I am, however: I am sitting in a small room on light grey low-tothe-floor, Restoration Hardware-esque couch, the same couch on which I have sat at some point watching one show or another or another for very nearly every evening now for eleven months, twenty-eight days, and twentytwo hours (the minutes do not matter for they are gone as soon as I mark them). I sit in the couch!s leftmost corner, right up against its overstuffed arm, a pillow under the small of my back, and a white blanket covering me like a fuzzy flak jacket. I 9