I’m in Fredericton, an idyllic riverside university town that likes to think itself a city. My Irish third great-grandfather arrived here from Massachusetts in 1826, to marry a local girl he had never met. They wed in a pretty little church across the river. I have deep roots here, though I feel more revenant than citizen as this is not my hometown.
Don’t worry, I have no skin in your game. I keep to the observant edge of things. If I wanted solid corporeal clout I think I’d let lost hikers photograph me while bathing in a cold brook or reclining seductively on mossy logs but, I dislike delivering proof of life this way. I’m the cryptid who visits your zoo. When I get bored, I can always leave.
The formless shadow of words is all you’ll find here, observations and warm ups to bigger things. If you have a malfunctioning brain which reads everything literally and cannot discern nuance, humour or abstraction, there’s nothing for you here. Some of this will make sense, thankfully much of it won’t…
Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can’t reach. Facts are lies when they’re added up, and the only kind of journalism I can pay much attention to is something like Down and Out in Paris and London.
—Hunter S. Thompson. “Letter to Angus Cameron, 28 June 1965.” The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967.
You can contact me at: words at mirabiledictu.ca
