After visiting the library, we drove by my old junior high school. I snapped a photo, but I made no connection to the place whatsoever. I wanted to. I knew I wouldn't like it, but I wanted to because I love my life, and I don't want there to be any holes in it. Perhaps Barbara Streisand was right, or almost right, when she sang, "What's too painful to remember / We simply choose to forget." Perhaps it's not always a choice though. Perhaps forgetting is sometimes forced upon us by the mind seeking escape. Perhaps will is not always involved, at least not conscious will, when it comes to memory.
Here's the thing. I can remember every kid in my second grade class, but I just can't get my mind to enter the hall of that suburban junior high school. And I want it to. I want to be there and feel again as I felt then, because that is part of what writing is, an act of recovery. A recovery of the past. A recovery of the self. A recovery of truth. A journalist writes not because it is easy, but because it is necessary for democracy. A historian writes not because the past is pleasant, but because it is vital that the past doesn't get buried. A novelist writes not because it is easy, but because it is necessary to capture our deepest desires, our deepest fears, the parts of us we can't slip easily into idle conversation. Writers write to keep into human dialogue what the rest of humanity chooses to leave out because it's too painful to remember. Good writing isn't escape; it's engagement with life at the highest level, which is why it was frustrating to look at my old junior high and get nothing when I absolutely know that place caused me great pain.
I teach at a residential treatment center, and one day one of my students asked me, "Mr. Steve, How do you get past something really terrible in your past?" Without much thought, I gave him my honest answer. "I don't really know. I know lots of people have incredibly horrific pasts, but I don't. I had great parents, and nothing really bad ever happened to me. You'll have to talk to your therapist about that."
We're trained to say "You'll have to talk to your therapist about that." Our youth will avoid the hard work of therapy by going through unofficial channels to receive "help". But, I was being honest too. I haven't had to deal with any of the big issues so much of humanity has to deal with: no violence, no rape, no sexual abuse. I've been lucky. Divorced parents is as bad as it got for me, and that happened when I was two, and so I have no memory of it.
School was my only hell. Yet, it was hell, and I want to get back there because there are some things one can only learn by reentering what hurt the most. There is a writing exercise by Natalie Goldberg called, "I don't remember." To do it, you just write down, "I don't remember" and write whatever comes to mind. Supposedly, the act of admitting that you don't remember eases up the pressure and allows thoughts hiding out in the deep caverns to venture towards the day light. We'll see:
I don't remember my first day of school at that suburban junior high. I don't remember pulling up in the bus. I don't remember the blue hall and long line of lockers. I don't remember the fear I had of forgetting which hall contained my locker as all the halls seemed to look alike. I don't remember the frequent dreams I had of not being able to find my locker, of wandering around the school endlessly, looking for it. I don't remember that kid Scott who reminded me of a friend I had way back in kindergarten--how he looked so cool with shaggy, long blond hair that curled around his ears. I don't remember being shocked by his Texas accent, or the fact that he was actually a dumb, cruel shithead who had a dumb, cruel shithead friend, named Steve. I don't remember shop class, or Miss Moore, who was young and slender with red hair and freckles and a heavy Texas accent. I don't remember how she flirted with Scott and Steve and ignored their cruelty to me. I don't remember listening to the Eagles "Hotel California" on the radio in shop, hearing the lyrics, really understanding them, and feeling I was really there--locked in the Hotel California, egos consuming each other with steely knives to avoid being eaten alive themselves.
I don't remember sitting alone at lunch, or Mr. Gray--the gray haired black vice-principal that came in and yelled "Quiet" at the lunchroom every day, walking past me in his gray suit and protruding belly, never seeming to notice that everyday I sat alone, not knowing how I felt so claustrophobic with the loneliness closing in tight around me like a thick darkness. I don't remember opening up my Tupperware sandwich container and hating that my mother packed my lunch in it because I was teased terribly for having it.
However, I do remember refusing to tell my mother that I got teased for the container because I knew exactly how low and stupid it was to isolate someone just because their lunch came to school with them in a Tupperware container, and I knew my mother was proud of the lunch she made me, and I knew that I'd rather live with sitting alone with my Tupperware container than to adopt a paper sack because the wolves wanted it that way. I remember knowing if I ditched the Tupperware container, it would just be something else anyway. I remember opening that Tupperware container as if I were claiming my seat on a bus in some horrible place like Montgomery, Alabama, and thinking to myself, "Okay, shitheads of the world, take this."
I remember not always being so honorable. I remember rolling a penny down the hall with another long haired kid who always wore Pink Floyd shirts. I remember him saying, "This is how I identify Jews; they'll pick it up every time." I remember how sick I felt inside as I laughed--how I was terrified he'd find out I was Mormon. I remember thinking how he was cool, and that I hated that I was selling out my soul to be with a cool kid, but that I did it anyway.
I remember how in class a beautiful girl with long, glossy brown hair, and deep, chocolate eyes sat in front of us. I don't remember his name at all, but I remember her name was Brandy. I remember how he'd play with her hair, and she would let him. I remember being amazed at that. I remember how she would turn around and talk to us, laugh and smile, and how it felt so amazing to not be isolated. I don't remember thinking, "It might not be right to roll a penny down the hall and yell 'Jew!' at the person that stopped to pick it up, but boy this moment makes it all worth it." But part of me must have had that exact thought, or I wouldn't have done it.
I remember one day a big, overweight kid with acne troubles targeted me as a friend at lunch. For a couple days, I accepted. He drew pictures. I drew pictures. The difference was, I drew landscapes--lakes and trees, old barns, and tilting outhouses. He drew tanks, and bombs, and guns--lots and lots of guns. People blowing apart. He knew their names. Not of the people blowing apart--at least, I hope not. But of the guns. He knew them intimately. I don't remember thinking, "We're in danger here at school," but I should have.
I do remember feeling sorry for him, but knowing there was no way I could ever provide him the friendship he needed, I avoided him. As lonely as I was, our worlds were just too far apart. I could roll a penny down a hall and yell "Jew" to fit in, especially if it was to sit next to someone who was deemed cool enough for a girl like Brandy to turn around and smile in our direction, but I could never spend my days drawing tanks, and bombs, and guns. I had too much fun drawing aerodynamic people. I saw other kids designing aerodynamic sports cars, and I thought to myself, to heck with that. Why not design aerodynamic people? Short; squat; big, aerodynamic noses on jelly-bean shaped heads; spoilers on their butts. You could stand them up in a hurricane, and they would not move.
I was in a hurricane. I wanted to be able to stand and not move. I hated myself when I'd roll that penny down the hall. However, I was proud that I never asked my mom to pack my lunch in a paper bag. I was also proud that I never drew a tank or gun. I was proud that although sometimes I would fantasize about taking the head of one of my tormentors and smashing it against the locker, most of the time I realized each of us was just doing his best to survive.
I wrote my first poem that ninth grade year. I don't remember all of it. Part of it went like this:
Whose beast are these, who kill to cry
Who drink the blood of their brother's sigh?
These, these--are His to keep,
which he loves, forgives, and hopes to keep.
I was proud of that poem. I still am. However, I also know I rolled a penny down the hall and yelled "Jew" at the small kid who stooped down to pick it up. I hope in his mind he told me to go to hell and now proudly displays that penny as a trophy for having overcome, if only for that moment, the stupidity of the world. I wish I had my Tupperware sandwich container. I'd mount it on the wall in a gold frame to remind me of my better self--how at least a part of me was willing to fling a righteous middle finger at the world--to proudly hold up a cross, a poem, an act of forgiveness, instead of just conforming to cruelty.
That test never ends. It's what fuels the anti-immigrant movement, and it's what got Christ nailed to the cross. It's ultimately what we are here for: How will we stand when the winds of humanity are blowing in the wrong direction? We are here to learn to fling that metaphorical finger rather than roll the penny and yell "Jew" in order to fit in. Our soul and our God demand to know ultimately where on that question we stand.
I hope I prove to be as aerodynamic as those squat, little figures I drew because we definitely live in a time when the winds of humanity are blowing in the wrong direction.
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