These diagrams come from a court transcript, recording a trial that occurred in March of 2021. These texts are about an act of “sexual interference of a child.” I was the child being interfered with. My seventh grade phys. ed. and math teacher did the interfering.
The full court transcript is 843 pages. The picture on the front cover, 80 percent of two reams of paper, depicts the actual physical size of the document. Access to the document cost me a bit over three thousand dollars, mostly raised via go fund me. It would have cost more but the defense lawyer requested a copy first, so it had already been prepared. The transcript moves between the incredibly banal, and what could be scandalous. Most of the questions the defense lawyer asked, that were transcribed, were about the exact layout of the room where the interference occurred. There is a complex flowing overlap between the state-sanctioned court records, the small government interventions found in blueprints and planning documents (layouts of the school, the hallway to the room, and the room itself), plus copies of old emails sent from me to the teacher. I had to appear in court after the trial and ask the judge to lift a publication ban on the trial, so I could write about the trial.
The trial took place in a small town in central Alberta. I flew in late the night before to Edmonton and had a cab drive an hour out of town, to stay at a Best Western on the edge of the prairie. Other witnesses were billeted at the Wetaskiwin Travelodge at the exact opposite end of town because they were worried we would talk. The Wetaskiwin Travelodge is a 2 minute drive from the Wetaskiwin Best Western. The court house was in the cultural arts center, downtown, because the provincial court house in the town was too small to adhere to COVID restrictions. The trial went on for about five days. I was there for two. There was more waiting, then there was testifying. The teacher would end up being convicted, and then appeal, and that appeal would be denied.
There are no good words to talk about what happened. The teacher put his hand on my penis, he put my hand on his penis, he put my mouth on his penis, he put his penis in my mouth. In the sentencing portion of the trial, there was discussion of the wording in or on, on being a lesser charge. The crown called the act “oral sex,” making an argument for defense by abstention: sex is a penis in the mouth, a penis on the mouth is something else entirely. What that else it might be wasn’t defined. Both sides also used the phrase “kiss the penis,” an oddly courtly turn. They didn’t use words like suck or blow; didn’t even use the usual Latin euphemism fellate. The lawyers describing the hand on the penis didn’t use the legal words of previous generations, no fondle or molest, the interference made it sound technical, or in a wry moment, like sports. There was no plainness in the language. The law makes semioticians of us all.
Diagramming sentences is much like math. It is turning language into math. The school sought to teach all things to their students in terms that could be easily
diagrammed, could have a right answer or a wrong answer, could be proven or disproven, or could be made tame. The school’s system of control extended to spanking students for smoking or lying or talking back or not doing homework. There is then a direct correlation—I didn’t do my homework or I did it badly and I got spanked.
Language here: at the school we called it “swatted” when I was in school, the teachers and the lawyers defending the practice called it “corporal punishment,” I knew people who used the word “hit”—it’s simplicity marking a moral simplicity. My composition teacher swatted me for diagramming sentences late. The person who did the interfering swatted me for doing math problems sloppily, and then again for lying about how much I tried.
The texts are diagrammed via the method developed by Brainerd Kellogg and Alfonso Reid. Brainerd Kellogg and Alfonso Reid wrote a textbook titled Graded Lessons in English; Higher Lessons in English; A One Book Course. The book originated with the idea of diagramming sentences, of making sure all of the parts of speech were surgically extracted, and displayed. Their project was an attempt to seek pure clarity. They were typeset though, made clean. I had a computer program help me diagram these sentences, cleaning up an already clean process. The handwriting and the index card, attempting to rehumanize, formalizing a complex tissue of history and feelings. All three elements of the bookwork are attempts to literally, physically take apart. The picture on the front, an indication of the material size of the transcripts, the poster to expand and widen the physical potential of text, and to contain the other elements, and a dozen index cards—index for their pedagogical history, for their metaphors of control. The texts for the cards were sometimes chosen for their salaciousness, sometimes chosen for their blankness, stripped out of context, made to float against the meaning that the state or the school thought to impose. The ironic tension between the strictness of the index, the diagram, the language of state/school versus the looseness of the handwriting, and taking individual sentences out of context is key to the enterprise.
From the first grade, my report cards noted sloppy work, and lazy work. These index cards, I rewrote them several times, I tried really hard to make things legible. I am worried they are work that will disappoint or frustrate people who purchase them. I worry I will let people down. The swatting, the diagramming, the interference, and the teaching cluster together at the back of my head, all of it a specific kind of homework.
Making this work was deeply anxious. I rewrote the cards on the week of my 42nd birthday, and I returned to being six or twelve or fourteen. I rewrote the cards as a break from doing PhD work. I rewrote them when I learned that his appeal didn’t go through. I rewrote them as a rejoinder to the official mechanics of the state. The cluster never resolves.
Some Formal Notes on Language is out of print from The Blasted Tree Store
Featured by The Blasted Tree: February 24, 2023
Steacy Easton
Contributing Author
Some Formal Notes on Language is Blasted Tree original visual poetry