To Read & To Write

Twin Peaks, that quaint, quiet small town in Washington State that went a bit off the rails after the death - murder, to be more precise - of the town's sweetheart, Laura Palmer, is, as we know, a *fictional* place created from the minds of David Lynch and Mark Frost at the end of the '80s and early '90s. What Mark Frost ingeniously presents us with in  The Secret History of Twin Peaks (published 2016) is a slew of documents from diaries, reports and transcripts from the FBI and CIA, detective photographs, military (especially the U.S. Air Force and Navy) notes and letters, psychiatric files, newspaper clippings, and all sorts of other case files which locate Twin Peaks in a larger, global arena, with the intent to show how this small town is linked to the bigger picture in myriad ways. The whole of Secret History is written by an unknown Archivist, whose footnotes and endnotes, prefaces and epilogues throughout help us uncover the mystery surrounding Laura Palmer, her ...

Because of the subject matter of this book, I couldn’t write a proper review (maybe I’ll be able to write one sometime in the future). What came to me instead was a short note to Laura. A bit of *fanfiction* for those who are as obsessed with Twin Peaks as I:  Dear Laura, You are wise beyond your years: you are willing to accept what most people, young and old, cannot. Your innocence was robbed from you, yes, but you have something still, a power all your own that has nothing to do with sex. I know you’re surprised. But I mean it: it has nothing to do with sex. Though I know that’s one of your favorite things :) But this has to do with your capacity, your ability, to reflect, honestly and truly, within yourself and within each of your relationships, bringing out something that bravely stands in the face of superficiality and says: “F-you. I want - I need - something deeper.” It’s all right there in your diary. Between the horror, the twisted pleasure, the games - through the s...