Abstract

This research-creation thesis consists of a deck of cards featuring a series of interconnected non-fiction lyric essays that explore loss, secrecy and memory through the lens of a first-generation Canadian caring for a parent with dementia.

This collection, titled Two-Way Mirror, follows the narrator’s investigation as they move from grounded research towards memory, attempting to assemble something from so much fragmentation. This grasp for control is further explored through discussions of magic tricks and magical thinking, which each become methods of managing their unstable environment.

Central concerns of secrecy and control are reflected in the choice to make this deck a trick deck: a discreet set of cards altered by magicians to permit tricks where sleight of hand is impossible. While the backs of my cards blend into any regular set, each face contains 1/52 of the writing, working as both an unbound page and a single playing card.

Unlike a paginated book, this deck can be shuffled and read out of chronology. A large part of my writing process consisted of working with fragments to create an interconnected narrative that had no blunt start or end, and could rather be entered from any point. This storytelling method associates like memory, working nonlinearly, and occasionally, as with dementia, splintering.

The resulting deck is an object through which the author can perform the ultimate control, drawing a line between writing and magic, new effects emerging the more the deck is shuffled, played, and performed with.