There’s a scene in Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” in which a teenage girl, only just victimized in the worst imaginable ways, runs barefoot and half-naked through a thicket of woods. We run along with her and our hearts leap with hope as she launches herself off the rocky shore, head first, into a calm, denim-blue lake. We know she is a competitive swimmer, so we are sure she will outmaneuver the bullets that pursue her, and we watch confidently, holding our own breath in solidarity.
Her powerful strokes reassure me of the quiet reservoir of strength we possess, even post-trauma. Especially post-trauma. When there doesn’t seem to be anything left of us, there is. When we feel empty and hollow inside our skin, we are not.
Self-preservation is one part of it, the adrenaline that takes over when just remaining alive is the singular goal of each ten-second interval. But after the immediate threat has passed and the exhaustion of reflection sets in, there is something inside us that says “get out of bed”, or even “don’t get out of bed … you need to rest.” This intuitive voice can be misleading and lull us into complacency — sometimes it convinces us that we have earned a third Manhattan in our struggle. That we deserve it. There’s another strength that helps us discern the message behind the message.
On some level, I think most survivors know that you can’t just hold your breath and hope for the best, for the bullets to whiz past in slow motion. You have to keep swimming, kicking hard, lungs screaming for air. Eyes straight ahead to probe the murky depth.
That woman opened
Her mouth,
Foregone under honey,
and the rough Trading began.
Domiciling spelled permissible
grasped at felicity
Recast the girl and
Sated all the zone.
Until
An alliterative gradualism
Uncollected, shook water from ears
blistered with enterprise.
In Response to Executive Order 9066:
All Americans of Japanese Descent
Must Report to Relocation Centers
Dear Sirs:
Of course I’ll come. I’ve packed my galoshes
and three packets of tomato seeds. Denise calls them
love apples. My father says where we’re going
they won’t grow.
I am a fourteen-year-old girl with bad spelling
and a messy room. If it helps any, I will tell you
I have always felt funny using chopsticks
and my favorite food is hot dogs.
My best friend is a white girl named Denise-
we look at boys together. She sat in front of me
all through grade school because of our names:
O’Connor, Ozawa. I know the back of Denise’s head very well.
I tell her she’s going bald. She tells me I copy on tests.
We’re best friends.
I saw Denise today in Geography class.
She was sitting on the other side of the room.
“You’re trying to start a war,” she said, “giving secrets
away to the Enemy. Why can’t you keep your big
mouth shut?”
I didn’t know what to say.
I gave her a packet of tomato seeds
and asked her to plant them for me, told her
when the first tomato ripened
she’d miss me.
“Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means… What is going on in these pictures in my mind?” — Joan Didion, in her 1976 New York Times article, “Why I Write,” (full PDF), which begins: “Of course I stole the title from this talk, from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write… I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you.” (thx, @ambercadabra)
(Source: austinkleon)
It was always the waking up that surprised her. Not because she didn’t claim ownership over her own reckless behavior, but because she found that a little sleep, even forty minutes or so, produced just enough conscious distance that she was startled by the evidence around her. That evidence, usually in the form of vomit (or worse) on her clothes, or receipts, or other sundry items that made it home with her somehow, served to confirm events from the previous night that those few moments of sleep attempted to wash away. But the evidence was clear and couldn’t be disputed.
As long as she was alone, she could imagine a “best case” scenario. And she was almost always alone. She made it home most nights – clutched that tiny victory of self-control fiercely, like a baby with a soggy cheerio in her closed fist. Waking up anywhere other than home seemed a double defeat.
The Loft Literary Center is holding a 6 word memoir contest on Twitter to give away a free admission to my online writing course “Going in Sideways: Practical Strategies for Writing Memoirs” … and I get to be the judge! So fun! Check out my website to sign up for the course, too — It starts February 6th.
The next time I appear on NPR or the State of the Arts blog, it will be by name. Got that, Universe?
“Life’s absurd. Live authentically. Stop whining.” — Wally Lamb
Stravinsky’s wife got the shaft. She tirelessly championed her husband and musical pioneer, watched as he spent almost twenty years living a double life with his mistress and eventual second wife, passed along her own tuberculosis to her daughter Ludmila, then witnessed said daughter die before she croaked herself. What a raw deal.
Up until now, I pitied myself a lot. Felt bad that I’d been through my own gamut of unfortunate events. But really, it was nothing like Katerina Stravinsky.
I feel a bit guilty, too, for using a work like “croaked” to describe her death. I’m certain the onomatopoeia is right on, but sadly, I also have no doubt that her demise was prolonged, painful, and very messy. As she lay in her bed, likely confined to bed for most of her final days, she must have soaked countless rags with spit and coughed-up blood. Necessarily isolated, and yet still responsible for the death of her daughter, she must have lingered that final year in mental agony matching her physical pain.
I’m struck by the cavalier nature of my initial reflection. Is this because I can’t seem to wrap my head around the tragedy of her life? Certainly, she’s not alone in this standing; every day, thousands of men, women, and children must suffer unimaginable horrors. But that’s just it - they aren’t really unimaginable. These horrors are fully real and present, imaginable by those of us who allow ourselves to go down that dark path of the mind’s eye. No need for visual evidence even, just a quiet union of emotion. It’s easy enough to come back, to open our eyes to the drawn curtains of morning, with the January sun peeking through. A sigh of relief might escape between sticky lips and a quick rub to the forearms will liven up frightened and heavy limbs.
Because then it’s morning. All the beasts of the past are sleeping again and there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. All that panic may rush in again without warning and flash flood the chest, like consumption, until it can’t draw breath. But panic won’t kill you, at least, it won’t stop your heart. My doctor told me so.
Your heart keeps right on beating, right through the fear. All the way to the last day. As long as those beasts stay asleep (tiptoes and whispers, but look back, and yes, they’re there), I’ll smile a little because they’re not so frightening, really, purring and cuddled up against each other to stay warm.
But I’ll kill them yet.
“I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you’re depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin — everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone — and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?” — Margaret Atwood (via pavorst)
(via pavorst-deactivated20120105)
I didn’t taste the fruit cup on Christmas morning because I was too busy screwing up the rest of the meal. Turns out the oranges were piercingly tart.
I had it all planned the week before: caramel rolls and eggs benedict for Christmas morning. Then SOMEONE mentioned that caramel rolls were an X-mas tradition in another, previously married life. I, of course, instantly vowed never make another caramel roll as long as I live. So began the hunt for an alternate breakfast pastry that was gooey enough to match the indulgence of the caramel rolls, because my trusty blueberry muffin-making abilities were just too … everyday.
Nineteen hours and eighty-two crumbcake recipes later, I decided to hell with it: I was making caramel rolls. So there I was at midnight on Christmas eve, rolling out dough and trying to remember where I hid the stocking stuffers.
They rose too much and escaped from the pan in the oven, oozing butterscotch drippings that made for a sweetly smoky house.
The handy microwave egg poacher I picked up to make the benedict a snap? No good. After the third egg exploded and I was sure everyone would be cursing me in their beds, I abandoned the plan. I was really looking forward to making blender hollandaise, too.
I tiptoed back into the bedroom and stood beside the Count of caramel. Tears filled my eyes as his fluttered open.
He cleared his throat a little and squinted at me. “What’s wrong, Smoochie?”
I sniffled, “I wrecked breakfast.”
He reached an arm out to take my hand. “Oh Smoochie, I’ll make the Kernil’s special omelettes.” Omelettes made to order, for six.
I sighed and sat on the edge of bed. My Christmas miracle-man. Every single day.