WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

  • Transient Global Amnesia: “The Day I’ll Never Remember”

    A screenshot from NBC News reporting Katie Couric: "The Day I'll Never Remember"
    Veteran journalist Katie Couric revealed that she had a bout of transient global amnesia, a rare but temporary condition that suddenly robs people of nearly all memories even while they maintain self-awareness.

    Continuity | “a continuous sense of self” is my description of the same experience:

    I knew who I was. I recognized my friends, and they tell me I did not seem frightened, just confused. I had a past, but the present seeped out of my mind as it occurred. Who are you if you have only a past, no present, no future? 

    From the article: National Institutes of Health

    “Patients typically present with a sudden onset of memory loss lasting several hours, featuring retrograde and pronounced anterograde amnesia,” according to the federal agency.

    “Patients retain self-identity and demonstrate no neurological or cognitive deficits. They remain cooperative and can name objects, with no history of trauma or epilepsy. Symptoms last between 1 and 24 hours, typically occurring later in the day rather than after waking,” the NIH said.

    “Once resolved, the symptoms of transient global amnesia rarely recur,” the NIH added.

    It’s odd to see a story about a celebrity having the same very odd experience I did. Now I will wonder if she finds herself asking the same questions I did, about continuity, consciousness, “a continuous sense of self”. I continue to explore those questions today.

    I have no answers, and I am apparently not alone in that.

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  • Again

    I try to not write about this. I’ve mostly not written about this, at least with specificity. Now it’s a national issue, again. It’s always a national issue. We just pretend otherwise. 

    I began my professional career at a rape crisis center, working with victims of sexual assault. Then, for over a decade, I worked as a therapist in community and prison treatment programs for sex offenders. Eventually, I became the director of an agency that provided treatment for sex offenders and domestic violence offenders. 

    Also, eventually, I came to terms with my own history of sexual victimization. Yes, that does temper my views on this subject. 

    I was a good therapist. Working with offenders requires the ability to see them as real people, with their own pain and damage, and at the same time never forget how dangerous they are, never lose sight of what needs to be managed, and why. 

    I’ve always liked men. I often like aggressive, intelligent, talented men. They’ve often liked me. There were many of those in the groups I ran. I like Platner. 

    All this to say, a rapist, child molester, offender of any kind, is never just that. Nearly always men, they are people like others, working men, family men, men who claim to be Christian. 

    They are also willing and able to meet their needs without regard to the harm they do. At least as they are doing it; maybe later they look in the mirror with horror and quickly turn away. Then they do it again. 

    Sometimes they claim they were drunk and didn’t know what they were doing. Then they get drunk again. And again. 

    That repetition is important. That repetition is significant. That repetition is what makes an offender, that.

    That repetition occurs partly due to the twist in the offender, and partly due to the rest of us — family, friends, churches, employers, even victims — looking the other way. We look away, or justify, for simple and complicated reasons. We look away to protect ourselves. 

    Many of us looked away and elected a sex offender as president of our country. Many of those who cast such votes are parents.  Some are also offenders. A number of them, a much larger number than you imagine, have been victims. 

    Yes, it’s a mess. It’s a twisted, contorted knot. 

    Let’s not do it again.  

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  • Basho

    A black & white tuxedo cat on his back, legs open, requesting a belly rub. Very cute white mustache.
    Basho the Mustache Cat

    This is Basho, Bonbon’s brother. Where Bonbon is a monster cat, Basho is the opposite. Basho is a cat one expects. He is sleek, graceful, beautiful. A classic tuxedo cat, with a small white mustache. 

    He is, relative to his brother, a gentle being. He tends to warn before leaping upon one. He speaks lyrically, with a sweetness to his tone. He is much better at restraining his claws. 

    He is, also, small enough for me to pick up, or to carefully remove from my lap. Where he often is, though not as often as Bonbon.

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  • 04 July 02026

    Photo of an American airman from WWII, standing on his plane. This is my father, Richard Webb Brogan.
    A Celebration of Life (This is my father, Richard Webb Brogan, on his WWII bomber.)

    Today we celebrate 250 years of the United State of America, a Celebration of Life at the funeral. Family & friends gather to honor and remember, to share the funny/sad stories, to create a meaningful tribute to the lost. There will be food, drink, and fireworks. 

    Someone gets drunk and objects to the sweet white-washing of a history more complicated than acknowledged. Such objections are quickly quashed. The young man is escorted out by older, larger ones in suits or uniforms. 

    The crowd vacillates between true, wrenching grief, joyful memories held close, and fierce denial. It was glorious! The corpse in the casket was universally loved, extremely kind, generous and . . . 

    Some quietly, briefly meet in smaller rooms to reassure and remind each other of secret, private pain. These stories are not shared in the larger group. The failures and faults and crimes of the beloved corpse will not be discussed in the big room. 

    Some, my brother and myself, exchange glances, silently nodding at shared trauma. We know that hope and despair lie together in that box. 

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  • LINKS & reading

    A tall pile of books, with three music cd's on top. The books are novels, books about writing, maybe some poetry.
    Too much to read.

    I’ve spent three days working on my LINKS page. When I began blogging (22 years ago) we all had extensive links to other blogs, and to various sites of interest. That seems less common now, but I’m still in the old mindset. This is a problem. 

    There are a variety of components to this problem. The main one is that I can be interested in too many things. Being online can be like being on YouTube (Hank Green). So many topics! So many interesting topics! I think I want to see / watch / learn more about … all of them. I want more of this writer, this journalist, this presenter. Lately, this physicist (Carlo Rovelli). 

    I want to read all the blogs, especially the poetry blogs. Especially the blogs I used to read. I want to find, again, the friends I discovered online years ago. Now I discover Substack, with all its controversies and all those excellent writers I want to follow. This seems to be close to what the blogging community used to be, with comment threads and interconnections. 

    There are lots of blog-like “publications” on Substack. There, you subscribe, not follow. Reasonably enough, some writers request payment for their work. Even some poets! Mostly, though, I find more than enough to read without straining my budget. I can also read about philosophy and politics and artificial intelligence and physics and consciousness till I become . .. unconscious. 

    Which is the basic problem. I am old, I am not entirely well, I have very limited energy. Also limited discipline, which leads to unlimited expectations. Impossible expectations. Goals I cannot reach. 

    Check out that LINKS page. You will see my problem, and that page isn’t even done yet. I have more pages I follow that have not been added. I will be doing that over the next few weeks. Adding, or pruning; we shall see. Many links came from Dave Bonta at Via Negativa, who always has pointers to good reading. Others I found or resurrected myself, and then there’s Substack…

    Nap time.

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LINKS:

Poetry Blog Digest @ Via Negativa