letters from the fringe - #1

Letters From the Fringe #1 —

“My name is Brandon Hēthcōx, and i myself am one who is on the ‘fringe’ of the ‘General Public Society’ and for the wrong reasons more so than for the right reasons… I have done my best to rise above my sad Childhood & Teenage past.”

9 pages of re-tellings from an era and area where Dustbowl migrants sought refuge, commonly finding themselves amongst the dislike of locals — even from the locals on the fringes themselves.

A 1940s childhood in Northern New Mexico

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Paired with a 127 film photograph, 2022, kodak brownie

the blood & the bones

i shed selves like a skin. i meet people that demand a better self than the one i was before. who grate along the accolades of inauthenticity. i meet these people to remind myself of how i hide behind comfort. i distract. from the truth, the passion the dreams. i pretend they’re not there because taking up a space that big requires a belief in your own self-worth. i don’t talk much about the visions in my dreams with others anymore. i distract. and in turn i risk growing smaller, a pruning stage for self-doubt and consequences. i can’t trust you if i don’t trust myself. i can’t undo the pain through pleasure. it has to hurt. the mark of a lesson. but i don’t want this opportunity to come so far down the line— i want it now. to stop dancing in graveyards. to stop burying things when i’m scared of their death. i hold on for so long it’s me that chokes. so let this site mark the emptiness that comes from a lack of trust,  lack of honesty & the hollowness of hiding. let me forget the rhythm in these steps as quickly as that sun set. for its the Blood & the Bones. you can only see one after you’ve seen the other.

where a story lives

storytelling is a sensory experience. it’s much more than spoken word, it’s in the tension of the cheeks, the wink of an eye, the drumming of your finger tips. it’s in the rage, the anger, the despair felt behind the friction.

there’s a story told in the upturned sprout in the sun. in the way my body recoils from the slightest touch, and in the moments when it finally gives in. it’s the space between a breath and the pace of your steps, running across the pavement.

it’s in the wrinkles of your scars and the softness of your belly. the moments when my tongue is tied and i say too much. or too little. i wish you had heard, what it was i wished to tell.

but it’s in the way you forgive and the way i don’t forget. carried with it all those apologies once said before, from them to you to me to them.

storytelling is a sensory experience. and the lines are creased onto the palms of your hand.

***where my mind wandered after a talk hosted by Margaret Kemarre Turner [MK] on the impossible transference of ancient language into our modern one. sharing her app that teaches Arrernte language to new generations, and visitors of the land as well.***

body / mind

i was followed for my first time a bit ago. luckily my body knew it was beginning before my mind did.

cars had been passing me for awhile, but when he did my skin crawled. i don’t know what set me off, but as his truck drove past i told myself to remember it.

parked up at a rest stop on the side of a remote highway, i tucked myself away behind the lot in the bushes, but knew no trees were tall enough. when he came back down the highway to find me, he could.

he drove past the rest stop barriers as i did, slowly circling my van before peeling out of the parking lot. back up the way he came, the way i was headed.

i decide to wait until just after dusk, where the lack of light would provide some sort of protection. i drive to the next small town, past a bar with its doors open. men filled the seats and his ute sat in the space out front. i thought he wouldn’t notice.

it’s dark now, and these headlights behind me won’t gain distance when i speed up. nor do they grow closer when i don’t. 120 kilometers per hour or 80, they remain the same. 225 kilometers from where it first began and he is still following me, out into more and more desolate land.

i’m searching my maps for a pull out to hide behind when the flat road finally begins to curve. i know i have about 30 seconds to cut my lights and hide my van.

i barely brake when i come off the highway, aiming straight for the bush road. but it’s no longer there, over grown or never was, and my wheels only spin up dust. i’m stuck and i’m stuck and i’m stuck. and the headlights come closer and closer and closer.

i think there’s no way in fuck i’m letting him find me stuck. i reverse, turn my wheel in every possible direction, but it’s when i aim forward again that i crank the engine out of its rut and go flying through the bushes, too tall for me to see what lies beneath. i think i’ll rip out the bottom of my van but at least i’ll have momentum.

he’s too close now for me to do anything but park like normal and kill my lights. slowly, he pulls off too, that same, silver ute. i keep my engine on and gun it back up the highway as he pulls up next to me.

i’m lucky that i have just enough gas to make it to Longreach. at first i was cursing the boarded up petrol stations, closed for the night, stopping me short, until i realized hiding in as public of a place as i could was what would keep me safe.

i hate having to tell people where i am for the night. cause i know me disappearing for a while wouldn’t sound any alarm bells. i live in a way where i know it wouldn’t be a shock. so i hate having to tell people where i am for the night. lord knows i’d rather have nobody know anything at all.

but my body is feminine and it’s alone on the road. it takes a community to keep me safe.

/ decades /

sometimes you have no idea what you’re pulling on until it pops and the insides come out clear. contact with the points of pain. these are the moments when i know i’m healing something. “why does it hurt here? / what am i hiding from myself?” today that meant facing the fact that the people who were supposed to teach me love were also the people who tried for my death.  the freedom of finding a simple sentence to name a decades worth of emotion. so it cracks.

i smile when i come in contact with my points of pressure and when my mind begins to burn because it means space is clearing for something new to grow. so i can put myself to bed. so i can wake up early to put in the final nail. so i can take an easel i made myself out of a thought, a painting i started weeks ago, and my camera to document the moment. and so i can teach myself how to love.