without bursting into anything
“I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. I write this without breaking my heart, without bursting into anything. Perhaps this is the real source of my sadness. Or, perhaps, Emily Dickinson, my love, hope was never a thing with feathers. I don’t know, I just find when the news comes on I switch the channel.”
-Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
But on the other hand, it’s been a beautiful weekend full of friends and food, woodsmoke and saunas and the glow of moonlight through the clouds, rain, cuddling, and sunlight. I subbed last week in a high school English class whose assignment was a reading on September 11, and i thought about sharing my memory of being in high school the day it happened, but there was no point, no parallels. There were soccer games that day. That was their primary interest, and the fact that they could get their school pictures taken with an American flag backdrop. Last night, we told our “where were you when” stories around the fire, and the 4 year old groaned in boredom, smeared marshmallows on her face while no one was looking. TV was usually involved in the memory. This morning’s replaying of NPR’s disaster porn footage brought c to tears, and he asked me to turn it off and then turned his attention on the broken toaster while i pretended to be a student. Hours later, the heating element on one side of the bread slot on the left, which hadn’t worked as long as i’ve been in the house, was fixed, and i’d had an unoriginal thought about narrative persona, which i wrote down in pencil and erased. Sherry Simpson asks if you are “content to be a listener, or must you be a storyteller, too?” She was writing about the stories told about remote corners of wilderness, places that tend to be harmed or irreparably changed by repeated storytelling. Memory isn’t always a creative force.
I like how you are always problematizing and analyzing the ideas of stories and storytelling. Of what should or shouldn’t be said, and why. I never know what to think after reading one of your entries like that, and I think that’s a good thing. What are some of those places that have been destroyed by storytelling?
I suppose too much of the story telling could eventually change the “history”.
Or could inspire too many people to visit the place in droves, thus destroying it.
Lauren, that’s exactly what Sherry was writing about–and mentioned the national parks where industrial tourism has totally taken over what the place is all about. Specifically, i was thinking about a loop hike in Denali that was written about in Backpacker magazine (or Outdoor, or whatever) and everyone who read about how awesome it is wants to come do it for themselves…and metaphorically, i’m wondering if the constant reliving of our own mostly pretty unremarkable experiences gives that dominant narrative a bit more power than is really justified. I guess…just because we have the memory, does it make it part of the “9/11 story,” or is it just…”what i did that Tuesday”? Not sure.
Lovely. I feel like your blogs are part love letter.
Or, by not telling it, we will forget and repeat the mistakes of the past. Irag and Vietnam come to mind. No more young men off to fight the old men’s wars that THEY never fought, or did their level best to avoid. THAT is the real danger of not remembering or retelling.
I completely agree, Tom, as long as what we’re remembering and retelling actually teaches those lessons. But i’ve been feeling like a lot of the stories we’re telling–in private and in public–aren’t really teaching us anything, they’re just repeating a sense of overwhelmed powerlessness and fear. And i’m not sure why we’re doing that. But again, i really don’t know…
Of course, now it’s the 13th and we’ve mostly moved on.
Whether or not the stories are told, we still forget and repeat the mistakes of the past.