Watermark: A Typical History of a Pretty Girl

I've written 23,791 words -- a bit behind, and not inclined to write today. I sit at the keyboard, not wanting to be there. I've gone back and given titles to the previous 28 word- splurges. I've checked my email. I've read this week's pep-talk. I've considered taking the day off altogether. I've tucked away my dreams in that dark corner:

Gary F comes to see me, with his current -- wife? lover? -- He follows me about, won't leave me alone. No matter how I try to ditch him, I turn around and there he is again.

Something about locked doors, that do not work. Finally, we just sit together, silently, holding hands, and I wonder -- is this forgiveness? Is this what forgiveness is?

*******************

I am tired of this immersion in my past; I am tired of my present, as well. I write a poem, and as always, it betrays the feeling I have hidden away. Claustrophobia, walls moving in, clutter and dustiness and loss --

Is there anything I am willing to write this morning? I look at my list of topics, and nothing beckons me. The dogs snooze on their respective sofas. The radio plays old music.

And I feel an old woman, a woman looking back because there is nothing to look at, ahead. A woman whose dreams are peopled with old lovers.

Today, I'm giving you an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo project. Because it has adult content, I'm putting it below the cut so you can skip it if you'd prefer.

And for the rest of you, a parakeet:

NaNo 2007 27

A typical history of a pretty girl:

I am six years old, walking home from school in Denver. I run home to my mother, and tell her I have been chased by a man with a gun. I am frightened, and very confused, because I know that what I'm telling her is true, and not true. True, and not true. At once.

I am twenty, walking home from work in Billings. A man in a car calls me over to ask directions. When I get to the car, I see that he is exposed, masturbating. I turn away, thinking this did not happen. I hear the words: this did not happen. I even see the words pass by my eyes, like the ticker on the bottom of the CNN screen (cable news, which hasn't yet been invented): THIS ... DID ... NOT ... HAPPEN.

I am twenty-five. My women's group has come to Seattle to hear Gloria Steinham speak. We park the car and walk toward the stadium. A man approaches, unzips his pants and shouts obscenities at us. We, all of us, keep walking, as if this did not happen. We never speak of it.

****************

I am very good at this, this crumpling up a memory like a discarded note, tucking it away in some dark corner. It is only when the Seattle incident occurs that I remember the Billings incident, and then, again, both are folded away.

****************

When [an old friend] came to stay with me last year, I was annoyed by her need to reminisce. We pulled out my old boxes, letters and photographs, and she went through them all. She organized a file for me, old letters, old photos. I was irritated by this compulsion to immerse herself in the past, to re-member old events. The file she made for me still sits, unexamined, in the study closet.

And now, here I am. Day after day, pulling these scraps from the closet of my mind. As if it is of significance; as if it matters now.

****************

Another cold morning. Odd music on the radio. Squirrels and sparrows flitting through the lilac branches.

Yesterday, a sparrow wanted to go to the fountain for a drink, but there was [my dog] on the other side of the pond. The sparrow hid in the ivy, bobbing its head up and down, eyeing this mammalian creature: threat? no threat?

Finally, Henry wandered away and the sparrow flew quickly to the fountain, sip, and away.

*****************

This ability to hide memory away, it is problematic. It leads to misapprehensions, like: rape victims have an unusually high incidence of previous sexual abuse/ assault/ insult in their past. Well, maybe; but probably not. Probably, just like me, a current incident unclothes the masked ones, the hidden-away ones, that others never dis-cover. If they can help it.

*****************

It's problematic in another way. When a folded memory unfolds, suddenly, and you get a glimpse, or a whole view, suddenly, unexpectedly, you are left to wonder -- was that real? Have I remembered, or imagined?

And all we know, all we are learning, about memory -- that it can be implanted, that it can be bent, and twisted -- and all I know of the double-jointedness of my own mind -- all this, calls memory into question. Perhaps all that matters, all that is important, about memory, is this: that it exists. That it matters to -- that it shapes -- the individual mind. Perhaps its accuracy, or its creativity, is irrelevant.

*****************

Why do we ask one another: Do you remember...? If the other remembers differently, or does not remember at all, or even denies that such a thing could possibly have happened -- does this make the memory less real? Does memory have a reality of its own?

And that darkness, that vacancy that seems to be concealing ... something -- perhaps it conceals nothing at all. Perhaps we, the animal that cannot abide a vacuum, perhaps we simply fill it up, with whatever is at hand. Whatever seems, to this mind, likely.

******************

This week, important white men are telling other important white men that they have, indeed, seen UFO's. Such memories are mocked, or feared. We each have our own image, our own vast mythology, attached to this idea: UFO.

But these are important white men. These are grown men. These are pilots and politicians. Their memories -- whatever they signify -- cannot, in collectivity, be dismissed. They must be listened to. They must be considered. There they are, one after another, at long tables behind microphones, saying: I saw this. I saw this. I saw this.

So, it may be kept off the front page; it may be buried in the human interest section of the newscast, but it cannot be entirely ignored. It must be acknowledged, if not really heard, if not really listened to.

It takes many more women, many more children, to make a memory real.

******************

Comments

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I own memories similar to the pretty girl's. They have not seen the light of day. They have never counted in an examination from important person's panel, either.

I like how you wove those expereinces together, especially doing so without hysteria (it would have been very easy to make fun of UFO sightings, and you took the level road.)

That's how I see it, anyway.

And I like the parakeet, too. (I had one when younger, probabably around the time the un-aired events were happening in my life. Ironic.)

Posted by: ...deb | 15 November 2007 at 04:42 PM