Fugivity

CPFugivity

#fiction, #tradition, #normativity, #deviance

In Wovenhand one would grow up feeling a marvelous sense of community. There was an intrinsic beauty emanating from all folklore activities, rituals, and social gatherings. It was easy to absorb a sense of pride for the landscape, the architecture, from the people that created its history, and the traditions that had passed from one generation to the other.

David’s position was not different from that of the other children at that time. When going to the shops, older people would ask, with a smile, if he was Peter’s grandson. When replying with a yes, inquirers would feel proud to have recognized the lineage in David’s facial expressions. That was a habit that seemed common among the elderly, they made an effort to acknowledge the offspring of the people they knew from the past. A reassuring act that life was unfolding in a predictable manner. David would always smile back and reply gently, as his grandparents had taught him to do so.

A similar ritual would take place with the cordial ‘good day’ David would pronounce when encountering the elderly on the street. He did not know them, nor did they know him, but every time he spoke these words he saw slight contentment in their eyes, internally saying ‘fortunately some children still keep our old values and decency’.

The community would provide the fertile ground for children to feel part of something, already in their early ages. Ingredients such as imagination, fantasy, and celebration were carefully crafted to endure the long-lasting effects of the spell of belonging and perfection.

Slowly, David, as well as the others, realized that division was also an integral part of the ways of the community. They had initially experienced the art of storytelling from a place of naïvity, but later understood its potential for crudity. Tales of all kinds circulated around the community, but this time not in the same manner as when they were told in the main square, on a stage with a painted background and loud music. These tales were told in ‘petit comité’.

The tales going around spoke of the man that fled the country because of his debts, due to drugs, the woman that was caught cheat-

ing on her husband, or the husband cheating on his wife… tales that went on and on, ensuring to keep the rest of the community in its right place. One wrong move and one’s life would become a part of the community folklore, to be used for strictly educational purposes.

With that strictness also came a process of idolatry, at times silently and at times loudly, towards those who in adulthood had managed to create the perfect form of correctness. Successful jobs, perfect heterosexual couples, numerous offspring, and other forms of social representations that managed to reassure the efforts of the community towards its intact preservation.

Something characteristic of having reached the proper social position was the privileged status to be able to pity or comment on other’s misery.

As years went by, David started experiencing a breeze of fresh air when encountering different forms of doing, different lifestyles, and differences in general. Differences that would manifest subtly first, almost unnoticed, ensured to accompany him privately in perceived situations, as it was out of the control of others. These portable experiences of difference became private moments of rejoicing, his own sense of orderly and meaningful chaos. He experienced a particular sense of humor in this space that was yet to be categorized. A private pantomime of all that had been ordered before him.

In time, David extended his own sense of community to cohabitants with whom he shared a similar spark, complicity during private conversations, conjured projects, and waves of laughter. Normally they were people that would go relatively unnoticed, with no intention to be elected as distinguished inhabitant of the year. On the contrary, they would cherish the attitude of walking through the community, having a sense that it all belonged to them as well, but with no need of proclaiming its possession. What secretly also belonged to them, but they would have preferred to leave behind, was the nostalgia attached to the ever-lasting effect of the spell of belonging and perfection. The spell crafted during childhood; the idyllic sense of community that they tried to reproduce, but this time, in their own way.