I want the gift of not remembering.
This is what I remember of my dreams last night. I don't know who I was saying this to, someone or something with the power to make it so. Maybe that person is me, I don't know. I actually woke up saying the words.
I had a glimmer of a memory yesterday. Not a flashback. Just a weight sinking into my bones as I climbed down the stairs into a below the first floor level of a house. I can't call it a basement, it was too gorgeous. But my feet anxious going down the stairs and I felt dread like a splintering rock in my stomach. It was a little shimmery, like walking down steps a long long time ago.
This happens sometimes after writing. Even though I'm writing fiction, there are elements that are pulled from my own experience. And I say that as though it's a conscious act. It's not. It's just what appears in the writing. Yesterday at Dive-Deep there was some fierce writing happening all around me. My own was part of my book, fiction and yet...intensely familiar. Writing stirs things up that are best left sleeping is how I feel some days. But I wouldn't change it. At least when I'm awake. Apparently my subconscious has different ideas.
I want the gift of not remembering.
I am someone who chooses to not remember anything I don't have to. As a survivor of a complex kind of abuse there's plenty to remember. I've dealt enough ugly memories to last a lifetime. I don't want to remember anything I don't have to. Anything that needs to come up will, the rest, I'm content not to know.
A few years ago there was a lot of excitement and controversy over drugs that are being developed that will, supposedly, allow the "editing" of traumatic memory. Such a strange futuristic Sci-fi idea to me. We wondered, some of us survivors- if the drugs work, would we take them. It's a tempting thought- like a genie in a bottle kind of thought. It felt like a dangerous and tantalizing possibility. It brought old stories of three wishes and parables to mind that don't end well for the wisher.
I was surprised at how quickly my answer came to me. If there was a pill that allowed me to not remember what I know (know in that things seen through a blue wispy curtain way that memory works) I wouldn't take it. I accept that everything that has happened in my life has made me the person that I am today. I would not undo my past or my memories. How could I know who I would be today without the trauma. It was a force that shaped me. I like me pretty well. So I wouldn't want to mess with who I've arrived at, even though for a long time I thought of myself as broken and damaged. The writing work I've done with Jen Cross in her Write Whole: Survivors Write workshops has helped me change how I see myself. I don't see myself as whole in the traditional sense of a perfect sphere or pretty blue china plate, but I don't call my cracks or stitched up places un-whole. I am just a different sort of whole made up of different parts. I like to think I'm interesting instead of broken. Complicated instead of damaged. This was big work I will forever be grateful for.
A lot of the things that I rely on as a writer came out of trauma. I can imagine anything in vivid detail. I can listen to people in an acute way, I can adapt myself to anything and those are things that allow me to imagine and build characters that I can step into enough to write them from the inside out. I wouldn't trade any of that for a different childhood. I only regret the things that have hurt my children, the things that made me less of the mother I wish I could have been and the damage that happened as a result of my children and my biological family being in close proximity and the pain they felt when I severed ties. Unfortunately you can't untangle life that way. It's all pieced together.
I have no need to erase things from my head. I had enough of that happen to me growing up just by the force of the family mythology and being raised to pretend well enough to convince everyone around me, including myself that everything was fine. Besides I don't have that much confidence in this idea in practice. Memory is so tricky and the scientists don't know enough about what they are doing to be sure of how it will work. That being said there are already clinical trials going on and that would make a great book. I can imagine lots of horrible things going wrong when tinkering with the memories of Vets with severe PTSD.
I want the gift of not remembering.
I wish I had the rest of the dream for context. I wish I knew what is scaring me in the way down deep that was triggered by yesterday's writing. The language in that wanting is strange to me. The specificity of calling it a gift. It makes me curious. I will write from that today as a prompt and see what comes. Probably the exact opposite of what my subconscious mind wants. But I'm stubborn.
What would I forget if I could? Probably my own sins that I carry in a ticker tape list in my head. The things I regret doing, or not doing. Things that affected my kids or the people I love. I'm not big on regret but that would be nice, in fantasy. In reality, if I forgot my big mistakes I might just keep on making them.
What about you? Are there things you would un-remember if you could? Is there a gift you want that seems impossible?
You could write from I want the gift of... and see what comes next. Or write about a memory that you wish was different. You do get to re-write history with your pen if you choose. That's one of the wonderful things about fiction writing or truth and fiction blending on the page. I have a strong story that resurfaces from time to time about a family where there is a single mother who has the strengths of my mother, and even the sorrows, but none of the bad crazy of my own mother. That story whenever it comes back up always leaves me feeling happy and wistful. I think those memory drugs can't compete with the power of writing. We get to shape our stories true or not true into what we want. We get to edit our paper memories how we wish, without a pill. That's powerful stuff.
****
far memory
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
a poem in seven parts
1
convent
my knees recall the pockets
worn into the stone floor,
my hands, tracing against
the wall their original name, remember
the cold brush of brick, and the smell
of the brick powdery and wet
and the light finding its way in
through the high bars.
and also the sisters singing
at matins, their sweet music
the voice of the universe at peace
and the candles their light the light
at the beginning of creation
and the wonderful simplicity of prayer
smooth along the wooden beads
and certainly attended.
2
someone inside me remembers
that my knees must be hidden away
that my hair must be shorn
so that vanity will not test me
that my fingers are places of prayer
and are holy that my body is promised
to something more certain
than myself
3
again
born in the year of war
on the day of perpetual help.
come from the house
of stillness
through the soft gate
of a silent mother.
come to a betraying father.
come to a husband who would one day
rise and enter a holy house.
come to wrestle with you again,
passion, old disobedient friend,
through the secular days and nights
of another life.
4
trying to understand this life
who did i fail, who
did i cease to protect
that i should wake each morning
facing the cold north?
perhaps there is a cart
somewhere in history
of children crying “sister
save us” as she walks away.
the woman walks into my dreams
dragging her old habit.
i turn from her, shivering,
to begin another afternoon
of rescue, rescue.
5
sinnerman
horizontal one evening
on the cold stone,
my cross burning into
my breast, did i dream
through my veil
of his fingers digging
and is this the dream
again, him, collarless
over me, calling me back
to the stones of this world
and my own whispered
hosanna?
6
karma
the habit is heavy.
you feel its weight
pulling around your ankles
for a hundred years.
the broken vows
hang against your breasts,
each bead a word
that beats you.
even now
to hear the words
defend
protect
goodbye
lost or
alone
is to be washed in sorrow.
and in this life
there is no retreat
no sanctuary
no whole abiding
sister.
7
gloria mundi
so knowing,
what is known?
that we carry our baggage
in our cupped hands
when we burst through
the waters of our mother.
that some are born
and some are brought
to the glory of this world.
that it is more difficult
than faith
to serve only one calling
one commitment
one devotion
in one life.
source: Poetry Foundation
So many good prompts in this poem. I like each of the headings and first lines to write from -
My knees remember... (or put any body part in here, or make a list of body parts, add remember and see what calls to you)
***
Someone inside me remembers...
***
Who did I fail?
***
Sinnerman...
***
Even now...
***
This is not an easy poem to sink into all the way. These prompts might bring up difficult things- this could be risky writing. Take extra good care of yourself if you write to them.
Here is another memory piece that I love but is too long to quote here- so I'll give you an excerpt and a link to read the rest if you choose.
memory of water
BY REINA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ
september is a month like any other and unlike any other. it seems in september everything awaited will arrive: in the calm air, in a particular scent, in the stillness of the quay. when september comes, i know i’m going to lose myself. the ants climbing my legs and a certain change of light tell me so. the air comes and goes beneath my dress, pressing the warm cloth against me, pressing me with the desire to find myself in the sea, that sea beaten deep gray and magnetized by neutrinos, thanks to which i can perform my observations and telekinetic communications. the salty, sticky wall of the Malecón is covered with fish and forgotten hooks. i like to lick its sheen of salt and make my tongue salty and sticky. in that moment the rest of the city can vanish, it’s just that sea and me, before all thought, all desire. then i undress and enter, knowing i’ll find something, and that the boats—which seem suspended on the horizon, seem to have slipped their limits, motionless and painted there—are also mine...when i met you and you met me it was still september and we were strange and different and would be for a long time after—though i sometimes snagged you with certain secret hooks, shaping a sort of formless impression: something strange and indefinable divided the outline of your body from the space around you, but without making a human form, and in your eyes the sunlight revolved like a bicycle’s spoked wheel...
***
You could write from September. What is September for you? I always remember a great relief that it was time to go back to school. September meant a horror of a shopping trip where I would be forced to try on clothes that would place me at the top of the beat down list at my school but it also meant freedom was coming. Long hours out of my house. I liked September.
You could also take a break from writing today. I am learning that this is not always a bad thing. Your writing brain will not stop working if you take a break, especially from a difficult project. If you read awhile instead, or go to the beach, or cook or do anything that nourishes you. I've had some really physically hard jobs in my life and I tend to forget that writing is difficult, exhausting work. It requires breaks and time to replenish and rest. Time to wander a bit. The writing will be there for you when you are done resting. I used to think it would disappear. It won't. It will wait for you. It needs you just like you need it. How will the story be told without you?
I hope this day is tenderly good to you and your creative.
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