Dregs

A field guide to reading what settles

Stratigraphic core — composite specimen

0 – 3 yr Surface / Recent Turbulence

Freshly unsettled. High organic content. Things said without meaning to. Plans that became other plans.

3 – 12 yr Conversational Silt

Suspended matter from long exchanges. Contains: chosen silences, subjects steered around, explanations given three times differently.

persistent / undated Attentional Laminate

Fine parallel bands from repeated looking. Whatever you could not stop noticing. Accumulates without intent.

irregular deposition Grief Stratum

Dense and irregular. Fracture lines from rapid events. May contain: names that change your breathing, rooms visited once, the exact weight of certain afternoons.

deep / transformed Formative Clay

Heavily compressed. Original form no longer recognizable. This material was something else before the pressure. Now it is just you.

undatable Pre-language Layer

Before words. Approaching unreadable. Do not excavate without sufficient preparation — some readings cannot be unfound.

Tasseography is the reading of tea leaves — residue as oracle. Less documented is the practice of reading sediment from anything else: a conversation, a year, a life long enough to have layers. The specimen above is composite and generalized. Your own core will vary.

How to read it

  1. What lies deepest was not necessarily what fell earliest. Some material migrates.
  2. Absence reads as clearly as presence. A thin layer where you expected depth means something carried material away.
  3. The color of grief sediment varies by origin temperature. Cool griefs deposit in blue-grey. Hot griefs in red-ochre.
  4. Do not mistake the unreadable for the insignificant. The oldest layer is the oldest for a reason.
  5. A reading is not an explanation. It is a conversation with residue.

The practice of reading sediment is sometimes called archaeology.
More often it is called Tuesday.

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