A memoir of genealogy, forgetting, disappearances and possible futures
1742
An ancient relative (10th great grandfather, if you believe the research) was a Lancaster stone mason. Remarkable title of this archive “Freedom of the City Admission Papers” – what capitalism and the price of real estate accomplishes in Vancouver and Toronto and other urban spaces.
“Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.” Gertrude Stein (1923)
At the moment my life opens into a new set of possibilities, my new interest in geneology becomes a guilty pleasure. The long look back entices with the possibility of learning about, imagining, interrogating, and rewriting the history of my ancestors.
The unsettlement of a settler history refocuses the moment and on what is left out or forgotten, an erasure of convenience. The present comes into a different focal range as a consequence.
And the future – a catastrophic phantasm of climate change and extinction – disappear into the fog on a rear view mirror.
Unsettling Relations 