What could be better for time-refugee enfant terribles than to be cast upon the prairie at a reunion housed in a disused circus tent, on a discarded farm, a bit upstream from the middenheap. Middenheaps matter, waste-piles downstream a bit (lest a nest be fouled), away from habitation. The middenheap, the piles of revelatory refuse crushed in convoluted layers, canceled and discarded stuff of bygone refugees. A story of wanderers in convulsed pattern.
What did they eat, what wood or stainless ladle did beat on some drum or dinner bell, what poetic pottery, trade items, pets (or supper) bones; burnt and crushed, once valued – now eroding, discarded evidence of passed lives; even the affection in those lives.
Once wandering refugees left scraps from flint-tipped hunting somewhere around here. Now our circus tent rests on farm ruins of but a few generations use; plus the middenheap bits of steel, bones, glass, plastic and bundled papers; erratically layered.
After commercial skirmishes destroyed their daily pattern, circus tents and quaint farmsteads are now mostly gone…industry and raucous media replaced what was singular or family, small, clannish, close, (even romantic).
The ancient way is to rebuild on ruins and middenheaps, layer upon layer – that leaves evidence. Our tent (The Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture) will no doubt leave some mark – for awhile; but certainly no stone reference of its’ mighty empire, just partially burnt and bundled discard.
Refugees from some new disturbance are bound to show up, and build their own. Maybe our enfant terribles, anachronistic anarchists, will remain; then here will be another haunted place to be uncovered in measured layers.
Someday, maybe, someone who wonders about stuff in the middenheap might find useful evidence that is not yet consumed.
Projects of hands, maybe document bits recording homespun chores, numbers, affections, sentiments, burnt and crushed, layered among the middenheap, evidence not consumed, evidence of those who discarded and wondered on.