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| Emily Abendroth [Ahsahta] |
from Emily Abendroth’s ]Exclosures[:
We were bred to believe that even trying to make our own lives worth occupying
was the very height of rudeness or imprudence
We were minced into pieces and then recast as the involuntary navigators of an unworkably
narrow map which arrived in our laps under the guise of an etiquette manual . . .
Having reached the limits of recuperation
We were minced into pieces and then recast as the involuntary navigators of an unworkably
narrow map which arrived in our laps under the guise of an etiquette manual . . .
Having reached the limits of recuperation
Having grated harshly against the
question of what it was she wanted to recupe
Having first cooped herself up
within the miniscule range of choices provided
and then belabored those same joists
endlessly, painfully, but without extension
The person tried earnestly now to ask
herself:
Am I
in my own life instigating punishment to myself and to those around
me,
rather
than seeking rectification for our dynamics or solutions to our confusions?
Am I
in my own life delegating away my very livelihood to the state? Am I
fated to do
so?
Are
these the dynamics that if undone could undo prisons? Could
undo derision?
Could undo imperialism?
This obscene tension of scale — which the person variously
tried to inhale
or paled in the face of — was everywhere in the scenes
around her.
She felt, if only blurrily, the necessity to boil it down,
without however
making too smooth an oil of it. She felt like, “Shit,
what I need to do
is to evolve my paranoias, not to dissolve them.” . . .
TESSA:
What are the consequences of silence?
To which a single
hour’s version of oneself replies:
For me, one of the deepest consequences of silence is how shockingly quickly it achieves the status of involuntary muscle memory. A state wherein, having strongly asserted its unspeakability more than once, it thereafter tends to repeat itself in the form of a habit that unconsciously demands the constant re-exertion of its tactics. We each harbor so many constructed silences inside us whose original ideological impulse (if there ever was one other than fear or self-censorship/self-loathing) we can no longer identify and, more often than not, now openly reject, yet still can’t step out of as an ingrained part of the fabric of our very tissues. A belligerent cell memory, a retreat into instinct, an embodied cause of permanent self-sabotage. These circuit system impulses are the unshed offspring of deeply sown precarities or wells of shame or interior doubt subsequently masqueraded as if stalwart impermeabilities (i.e. forgeries of strength). A series of successive “don’t touch” signs affixed to the very organs. Performing in their operations not unlike a “Danger: Do Not enter” label which can at best safely keep others from wreckage and/or from falling in, but which leaves the area in question completely broken, a barely taped-off hazard zone.
For me, one of the deepest consequences of silence is how shockingly quickly it achieves the status of involuntary muscle memory. A state wherein, having strongly asserted its unspeakability more than once, it thereafter tends to repeat itself in the form of a habit that unconsciously demands the constant re-exertion of its tactics. We each harbor so many constructed silences inside us whose original ideological impulse (if there ever was one other than fear or self-censorship/self-loathing) we can no longer identify and, more often than not, now openly reject, yet still can’t step out of as an ingrained part of the fabric of our very tissues. A belligerent cell memory, a retreat into instinct, an embodied cause of permanent self-sabotage. These circuit system impulses are the unshed offspring of deeply sown precarities or wells of shame or interior doubt subsequently masqueraded as if stalwart impermeabilities (i.e. forgeries of strength). A series of successive “don’t touch” signs affixed to the very organs. Performing in their operations not unlike a “Danger: Do Not enter” label which can at best safely keep others from wreckage and/or from falling in, but which leaves the area in question completely broken, a barely taped-off hazard zone.
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