Trauma

This isn't one of our sources, but that's OK. It's a book I'm reading for class called 'Trauma and Recovery' by Judith Herman. It has a lot of great text from people who have been through traumatic experiences. Much of it could be useful, I think.

Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi:

"For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped."

"We have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is in much more danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us."

Other victims of trauma:

"I saw my father kicking the dog across the room. That dog was my world. I went and cuddled the dog. He was very angry. There was a lot of yelling. He spun me around and called me a whore and a bitch. I could see his face really nasty, like someone I don't know. He said he'd show me what I'm good for if I think I'm such a great piece. He put me against the wall. Things went white. I couldn't move. I was afraid I'd break in two. Then I started to go numb. I thought: you are really going to die. Whatever you've done, that's the sentence."

"I would do it by unfocusing my eyes. I called it unreality. First I lost depth perception; everything looked flat, and everything felt cold. I felt like a tiny infant. Then my body would float into space like a balloon."

"I recapture that moment precisely when my helplessness is so bottomless that anything is preferable. Thus, I unscrew my head from my body as if it were the lid of a pickle jar. From then on I would have two selves."

"Sometimes I feel like a dark bundle of confusion. But that's a step forward. At times I don't even know that much."

"I am icy cold inside and my surfaces are without integument, as if I am flowing and spilling and not held together anymore. Fear grips me and I lose the sensation of being present. I am gone."

"Did I truly wish to open the Pandora's box under my father's bed? ... Could I reconcile myself without bitterness to the amount of my life's energy that had gone into the cover-up of a crime? ... I believe many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person in order to continue. The phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising, then falters on the upswing. At the point of transition, I came close to dying along with my other self."

This text is eerily reminiscent of the Kafka/Boy named crow story, and I think we could easily integrate them.

Annie <3 Kafka on the Shore

I'm about halfway through and am utterly in love. Preliminary stuff I liked:

"I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don't exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. It's nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I've carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier." (11)

"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it." (44)

"But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop. I stretch out my hands and look at them. Both are shaking a bit. They look like somebody else's hands, not my own. Like a pair of little animals with a life all their own. My palms sting, like I grabbed onto a hot metal bar." (71)

"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology...But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone." (98) <--This is something I'd really like to pursue...but not memories on an individual level, but rather on a human level...what things get "stuck" in the consciousness of all human existence, even when no individual consciousnesses are alive to remember them?

Hope you all are enjoying your breaks!

Nakata's wish

It's not that I'm dumb. Nakata's empty inside. I finally understand that. Nakata's like a library without a single book. It wasn't always like that. I used to have books inside me. For a long time I couldn't remember, but now I can. I used to be normal, just like everybody else. But something happened and I ended up like a container with nothing inside.
Nakata doesn't have anybody. Nothing. I'm not connected at all. I can't read. And my shadow's only half of what it should be.
If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. Like my two younger brothers. I would have gone to college, worked in a company, gotten married and had a family, driven a big car, played golf on my days off. but I wasn't normal, so that's shy I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning. (306-307)

Kafka walks

I walk on for a while and reach a round sort of clearing. Surrounded by tall trees, it looks like the bottom of a gigantic well. Sunlight shoots down through the branches like a spotlight illuminating the ground at my feet. The place feels special somehow. I sit down int he sunlight and let the faint warmth wash over me, taking out a chocolate bar from my pocket and enjoying the sweet taste. Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished. But as time passes, the sun's angle shifts and the light disappears. i stand up and retrace the path back to the cabin. (137)

Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again adn drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those deatils of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them. (299)