2.15.23
What primary claim can I make?
This will not be a clever letter. I tell myself you are a creation. This letter is basically about survival writing. That topic might sound indulgent or melodramatic coming from me, but I would like to try to convince you otherwise. I tend to write in circles, so I’m writing regarding the last line of The Second Inquisition. “No more stories.” Of course, there will be more stories. I’m not sure why it seems important to start there.
Some relevant personal history: I started something when I was 21 years old. I am now 38 years old. The most important long-term writing project (est. 2020) to me right now centers on cicadas and snakes. Brood XIX is the most significant brood related to my project. The life cycles of periodical cicadas are well known. I cannot rewrite their evolutionary trajectory, and I occasionally remind myself of that. I feel I will be able to say more about myself and my relationships and how time is related to the way I value those relationships later. My youngest daughter is six, but she’ll be seven next month.
Several months ago, during a difficult time in my life, I read some information about insect defenses. I didn’t see anything about cicadas, though. I didn’t see anything about predator satiation. I read zines. I imagined other ones.
I recently wrote an infinite sentence and read it out loud to one of my students. She has been experimenting with writing long sentences ever since she read a long sentence I wrote. She told me, “In this one, I can hear your voice.” She mentioned that this sentence was softer than the other one she read. I told her I later realized I may have been writing to try to get rid of voices I didn’t recognize as my own in my autobiographical writing. I kept what belonged.
Even more recently, I wrote something far ahead of what I could think yet. Sometimes I need to catch up with my myself when I start to get very granular. If it is possible to read any autobiography into it, then I think I was telling myself that I don’t always recognize myself consistently in my experiences. Interestingly, when this happens, I recognize who I think I am consistently in another person’s behavior. This is strange, to be clear. But what is happening to me seems to be understandable. Is it possible to write, or make, a holding pattern for self-recognition? How far could that concept go? Could it create a model that infinitely checks itself or becomes infinitely generative? I think so. I certainly hope it doesn’t sound Cartesian.
re: the narrator : I recently spoke to someone on the topic of delusions. It was a heavy conversation. She said, “Even when I am doing well, I am working every day against being institutionalized against my will. This is not an overstatement. I do not have the luxury of anyone’s understanding here. I have no one who would speak up for my self-perceived sanity if I were hospitalized ‘for my own good’ or ‘for further evaluation.’ I sometimes feel desperate for an insurance policy that would break the glass in an emergency. I try to let go of this anyway.”
She went on, getting into the specifics of what had happened to her: “When I was hospitalized, I had the bizarre experience of believing people were performing in other people’s bodies and that these performances were dependent somehow on the cycle of the day, the person’s physical location in a room, and their relationship to objects in that room. Everyone was acting. So, as I understood it, my job was to detect who a person was, when they were that person (vs. themselves), and whether what they were saying was true. I once had a long talk with someone who I did not think was real. Sometimes, I seemed rather normal while I was doing this work. A conversation with a nurse or another patient would be going well. Then I would say something that would cut across the interaction to make it clear that I was not participating in the conversation on their wavelength. The worst part, though—a part I still struggle with—is that the suspicion and interrogation extended to my children. It got worse over several days, it scared them, and they are old enough to remember it vividly. I wildly speculated. I panicked. They remain profoundly affected by it. During that episode, I did need to be hospitalized. I couldn’t focus well enough to do basic tasks like ‘drive safely.’”
I felt for this woman and appreciated her candor. I once had an experience with delirium, though the diagnosis was complicated. (When it happened, I was open about this experience with people I trusted and told them about the direness of my mental health situation). I wanted to make her feel better, so I shared some of my story. I remember being in a hospital bed. An anesthesiologist was making small talk with me while flushing something out of a nerve block in my femoral artery. Then, she complimented me. “Kristen, you’re such a good patient. You’re so compliant.” And that was it. I hadn’t been doing well. I freaked out. I started pulling the block out of my leg and the IV out of my arm. I took off the tens unit I was wearing, which I thought was a recording device. I was under the influence of something that made my reactions slow and dramatic at the time, so it was a pathetic scene, I’m sure. But it was clear that something had shifted. After some distressing events, I was readmitted to the hospital for evaluation.
I shared that I had done my best to use the experience to create a positive conversation around mental health for my children. It was all I could do. I also told her that I embarrassed myself in front of a colleague that I really respect and who treats me as an equal but also holds authority over my position. Later, the timing of an even more difficult event would result in another intense and confessional conversation with that colleague on a similar topic, as circumstances left us with little time to write a course together. I couldn’t manage to sound convincingly sane.
I hope I haven’t strayed too far from The Second Inquisition.
We ended up talking about a lot of things: gaffes, abuse, surveillance, paranoia, art therapy, power structures, mothering, mutual exclusivity, biomes, the perils of openness, entertainment, imagination, definitions of freedom, ambition, the dissolution of ambition, commitment, etc. “I was committed,” she said. “I’m still committed.” We didn’t academicize this conversation, though we could have. I like to think we met in our basic humanity. “I have to be careful what I say around my family,” she told me. “’I can’t say something as simple as, ‘I am struggling to acclimate quickly enough to a model of community that is not intuitive to me.’ After a shift in worldview occurs, how do you identify a normal conversation? What is a dig. What is small talk. How do you quickly trust again. What can you say and write safely.”
“I bet you could acclimate.” I told her, interrupting.
“What would I even wager at this point,” she said (asked?) dejectedly.
“The future,” I told her, probably too brightly/dreamily. “Yourself, and daily ecologies of the future. What if there were another model.”
I don’t know if she believed me.
Sincerely,
Kristen
Kristen Tapson is an instructor in Information Science + Studies at Duke University, where she also co-directs the nascent Duke et al lab.
