Scytels and Spindles
Through anecdotes based on the fragments she has recovered, Golden moves us through the truth of her own story as it becomes clear, an awakening that happens line by line. Scytels and Spindles moves readers both physically and emotionally, confronting the unbelievability of repressed trauma, the shame and isolation of living in secret, and the hope that sharing the truth of who we really are can pave the way for every survivor to be mended.
Some stories simply don’t move in a linear arch of travel, beginning and endings can be intertwined. Mine has come to be in bits and pieces, disassociated fragments rendered into a whole. I’ve learned to come at it from the edges, allowing the picture to form peripherally, all the strands building slowly into a tapestry. Beating the threads closer together allows me to see the story, words woven in each pass revealing a truth I am building up to as I work from right to left, in and out, the loom bearing the weight of my actions.
The loom lends itself to women, the violence and love we must feel for those who enter and leave us, the war we fight to hold onto ourselves in the midst of it all. We have been weaving together our work and our stories, our lives and our pain, as we spin our way through the straw to the gold. I am surprised to find myself weaving together all of these lost moments, scratching letters in the dust, wondering if the telling of it will ever create a final persecution for the perpetrators, or, if I am lucky, a transformation of my own. Perhaps I will share a song that will earn me the wings I need to rise out of all this darkness.