There is the container. There is capacity. And there is overflow — catastrophic if it is a second-floor bathtub and just another day in paradise if it is a pint of beer. Tears spill over, a laugh fills a room, and big emotions demand attention. This passage — and frankly, most of Lewis Hyde’s brilliant A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past — fills me with incurable writer’s envy. He demands that we pay attention to the hold grief and rage take on not just one body, but on generations to follow:
THE UNFORGETTABLE.
Some emotions grip us, then fall away. A great happiness can bring sleepless nights when first it blooms, but the possession eventually fades. Two years out, no one says, “I cannot shake my joy!”Grief and rage, however — these can go on and on. Decades go by and still a loss or wound from childhood colors our days. Two decades have passed since Odysseus left for war, and still the old swineherd Eumaeus grieves “unforgettingly” for his absent master. Rage may be the more troubling of the unforgettables, and especially rage knit together with grief because these don’t just persist; they call for action, and in action taken, they reseed themselves generation after generation.
All the years of the Trojan War have passed, and still Clytemnestra cannot forget how Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter to put a wind in his sails, and so she takes her revenge, a revenge that plants the seed in turn for their children, Orestes and Electra, to seek vengeance against her. In Sophocles’s play that bears her name, Electra speaks of her father’s murder as a sorrow (or evil) that cannot be forgotten and describes her own passion (or anger) in similar terms, though in this case the Greek for “not forgetting” (our láthei) might better be translated from its root meaning — “it does not escape notice,” “it is not hidden.” The image is of anger as a thing that the mind cannot bury, cannot help being aware of. Electra’s passion won’t let her alone. It’s intrusive. It bugs her. We do not control the unforgettable; it controls us. The spirits of such unforgetting are called the Furies, the Erinyes. They cling to the memory of hurt and harm, injury and insult. Their names are Grievance, Ceaseless, and Bloodlust. Their names are Grudge, Relentless, and Payback, They bloat the present with the undigested past. “Most dreaded of the forces of insomnia,” they harry the mind, demanding for its release a ransom paid in blood.
We do not control the unforgettable; it controls us.
As our writers work alone in their journals, they circle back through what they remember of the past and pull forward evidence to better understand how they have ended in a cell. Generational trauma underscores every piece. In Anger, Brittany Vogeli writes: Imprisonment accomplished by our enemies. Trying to escape this fire day and night. We howl and throw things about. Shouting cruel insults. Anxious to be set free. Suspected apology never to come. Determination and desperation showing on our faces. When will it end?
A child who enters life into a struggling household learns to step around gaping holes of anger and neglect. This state of un-wellbeing is described in the free write Suffering is Long by Dustin Smith: How could I possibly gaze at all this seemingly endless suffering and not feel totally overwhelmed by it? Drowning is the only rational response to such a vast sea of sorrow.
In Anxiety, Shane Espinoza identifies the sensations:
There are too many sounds,
too much noise,
the heartbeat quickens
the body tense
In these pieces, the writers identify their symptoms and then lay out a personal prescription for how to manage overflowing emotions — a release with an exhale, and an attempt to move those feelings into the corner. It’s survival training after growing up in a world of shaking ground. The stakes are high, not just for our writers’ lives, but for the next generation. Somewhere at home there is a child waiting for them to return.
In Assumption Michael Wise came to a place where he challenged the solutions that moved him through the world. When they stopped working, he had to build a new set of tools:
I assumed I had to become hardened so
I would be accepted.
My many traumas helped create many masks,
I assumed I had to wear them,
with each mask I transformed into their
perception.
Ryan Poffenberger’s primary solution came in the form of disconnection, and like Michael he found another way for himself: For so long I was diligent at being disconnected from emotion and I used a temporary shield to stay alive in the streets. I now have embodied the calling upon my life I now cherish that my spirit is able to be moved by emotion! My tears are a reminder of the reset in my life…
In the discovery, Ryan found his way to not only connecting with himself but extending himself to others. You can read the galloping enthusiasm in his piece, the joy he has found choosing to live a full-color emotional life. As I read through this collection, I wonder how we reform this unforgettable into manageable bites that can cohabitate with mundane happiness of everyday life?
In the spirit of Ryan’s desire to share, we have one more piece. It is a love letter to the PonyXpress workshop and our writers written by a member of the Snake River collective in minimum security, Travis Carroll. The reason we share this with you is to convey the deep gratitude we feel for one another, Travis writes: Most importantly, all my peers, brothers, sisters who are the collective of collaborators to the greatness that this is, thank you. I love reading all your truly rad works that come to fruition. The mind, heart, pen, paper, connection holds immeasurable power and value.
Travis comes into the workshop and unbottles what is in his heart to a room full of equally bottled-up men. We watch this happen each visit, we start with the clear ring of the bell, and then, shake up the whole mess to bubble and brew a conversation. I don’t hold back when I read our opening poem — I’ll use a Whitmanesque barbaric yarp, if the text requires it. We laugh and yes, we see tears, shaking hands, downcast eyes. There is rage in the room at times. There may be a story of a fall… of a lost relationship with a child. We navigate conversations from the perspective of folks who have lived profoundly difficult lives, caused devastation and harm, and we write together every visit to manage the unforgettable.
What comes to the mind at the end of our time — whether it has been heavy or buoyant — is collective effervescence and “I cannot shake that joy!” | TDS