Tiger Tiger by Margaux Fragoso
“You’ve always been such a victim. You should just shut up.” –one of my sisters
“Sometimes we're abused; we have to talk about that.” –Linda Bubon, bookstore owner
To tell or not to tell. By writing about molestation and assault, Margaux Fragoso ventures onto a tremendous limb that could crack and break, plunging her to the ground with shattered limbs. Don’t tell the family secrets. Never spill the beans.
Fragoso breaks the rule. She tells. She tells in detail.
In “Forced Silence: A Neglected Dimension of Trauma,” Eric D. Lister, M.D. says that when children are assaulted in their formative years, character structure is still nebulous. This creates psychic fusion with the perpetrator. The children absorb the hurt without being able to understand it.
Another element of childhood sexual assault is what Lucy Berliner of Seattle, cited by Dr. Lister, calls a “bid for the affection of a hating love object.” Often, this "hating love object" is the biological parent who for whatever reason isn't paying enough attention to protect the child. Sadly, as happens with Margaux Fragoso, the parents literally deliver the child into the hands of the pedophile.
To speak openly about trauma “breaks an implicit promise not to tell.” The 
secrecy of abuse binds the child to the abuser, creating “a lasting relationship with the internalized image of the perpetrator,” Dr. Lister writes. Recovery requires severing the emotional bond with the aggressor, and with parents who failed to protect. By “telling,” the child loses her biological and her fantasy parents.
After being molested from age seven onward, Fragoso attempts a life outside the pedophile’s control. He ultimately commits suicide, the ultimate aggressive act, leaving her with orders to write a book.
In The Guardian, a reader calling herself herself “rise again” addresses attacks on Fragoso for "telling:"
Feeling alone and isolated and thinking you're going mad can be part of the aftermath of abuse and reading accounts by survivors can help this….Commentators like to pontificate, theorise and quote dodgy statistics but they often don't want to hear or learn from those who've experienced abuse. …if I'd not been abused I'm sure I'd be very fearful of listening [to Fragoso]….I hope I'd be big enough to not shut out someone else's experiences because of my own discomfort. ... [Abuse] is a very important issue because the more silence surrounding it, the more abusers get away with it. Silence is their power.
I vote for an end to silence.
Concentrated Sweetness
How did I survive the sudden death of my father, the year-long dying of my mother?
I stuck close to friends, in New York and on the West Coast, and everywhere in between. I joined a support group for the grieving. I had little to say but how sad I was, and I said it repeatedly.
My concentration vanished, and driving became difficult. The car occasionally veered off the road, and I realized I was in some kind of altered state. I howled while driving, and I howled in the forest. I drove the back roads, the way my mother did before the physician said Take Away the Keys.
I started to meditate again. At first, meditation meant I read texts that were supposed to be inspirational. That was good, that was fine, but it reached only what some call the left brain. The left brain, or the logical rational part of my brain was impaired.
I wrote attributes I wished for on slips of paper, and stuck them all over the house: I wanted to be loving, patient, tolerant, and kind.
The people in the support group taught me I could not be loving, patient, tolerant, and kind unless I was first loving, patient, tolerant and kind with myself. When the facilitator, Michael, suggested I list what I liked about myself, I cried.
Read ‘Liberating Life’ in Glossolalia
The neighbors who bought the empty house beside Paul’s were Mormons. Melissa had known Mormons, but before she moved in with Paul, she had never known a Chinese Buddhist monk. She wondered if she should tell the Mormons that a five-year old was assaulted by a gang of boys in their newly-purchased house. The Mormon man was short and compact. He worked for a chemical company. The woman was mildly pretty and seemed to spend all her time tending to the three children, all under the age of five.
Read the rest of Kirie Pedersen's 'Liberating Life' in Glossolalia.
Forest meditation with collie and golden retriever
I was at the lowest ebb, ever. My parents died. My family fractured along fault lines based on ancient grudges and current gripes. I had just arrived back in Manhattan and could barely drag myself along the street. I would never again (I was sure of it) have confidence, energy, hope, or even the ability to get out of bed in the morning.
On a mysterious and dusty bit of Broadway sidewalk, on one of those ubiquitous tables of books that sprout even in snowstorms, my eye was caught by a bright red cover. The title was Self Hypnosis, the Complete Manual for Health and Self-Change, and the authors are Brian M. Alman and Peter Lambrou, both PhDs.
“How much?”
“I’ll give it to you for five,” the bookseller said.
“Do you really need that?” my husband asked, the obligatory husband question.
“Yes,” I said, and the man placed the book into my hands.
In the year since, I’ve read and re-read the book daily, trying out every exercise, and then starting over. I learned to shut out the sirens and cabs of Broadway, the cell phone conversations of neighbors, and even, just slightly, to relax on a dentist’s chair. Eventually, as the authors suggest, I wrote goals and dreams.
The authors never tell you what to do. They claim the subconscious or inner self doesn’t like being bossed around.
Five Reasons to Go Wild
Chickaree, courtesy 'Woodshots,' by Gary Woods @woodshots.com
A foot away, a hummingbird sucks nectar from a bright-orange blossom. From above, a Chickaree drops bits of Douglas fir cone onto the page of my book. A whirring sound tells me the adult female bald eagle is passing overhead. Along with her lifelong mate, she raises one or two chicks a year in a massive nest within sight of my home.
Instead of a yard, I’ve maintained my property as habitat.
The norm for what a yard should look like comes from European sweeps of lawn and cultivated clusters of plants. Pioneers homesick for the old country and fearful of forests cut down trees and native shrubs, and planted lawns of non-native grasses to be endlessly and noisily mowed, often sprayed with noxious chemicals, the American Dream in motion.
Fear of Finishing and the Constant Rewriting Gig
Why do beginning writers or any writers get one rejection, and then rewrite? Or go on to another work, abandoning weeks, months, or years of work?
According to Louise deSalvo, writing in her excellent Writingalife's Blog:
“Fear of failure? Failure of nerves? I don’t think it’s either, and I think it’s easy for people who haven’t faced a situation like this to pathologize something that’s simply a normal part of the process.
Maybe this agency won’t take this work. That’s possible. That’s life. That doesn’t mean that the work isn’t ready; it means that that agency didn’t take the work. To rewrite at this stage would mean that this writer is using rewriting to deal with her anxiety. What needs to happen here is that this writer has to deal with her anxiety, and not use her work to deal with her anxiety. Many of us do that: judge a work is ready, then retreat, then rewrite. All to deal with the anxiety of letting it go, passing it on to judgment.
In this publishing climate, it might be a long and bumpy ride before this particular work finds a publisher. That this writer recommends it might not assure that this agent will take it on, that a press will take it on. Still, that doesn’t mean that the answer is to hold it close, rewrite it, hoping that the next rewrite will be the one about which you won’t have anxiety.
Jared and the Llamas in Avatar Review
Read Jared and the Llamas, by Kirie Pedersen, in Avatar Review, Number 13.
Avatar Review is an online review that seeks to display the highest quality writing and visual art. Its purpose is to provide exposure to authors and artists and give temporary shelter to their work. Avatar Review provides a forum for writers and visual artists to share in this electronic medium.
Jared and the Llamas
By Kirie Pedersen
From the moment she met Jared, she knew their entire future. It swirled before her eyes: sex, betrayal, longing, and hurt.In the beginning, he was simply a student in her class.
Later, Jared said he, too, saw their future before him. “What did you see?” Elisa asked.
“This certain place in the middle of your chest,” Jared said. He touched her breast. “Right there.”
“You mean you were a horny kid.”
Listen to Kirie Read ‘Congregation of Loons’ in Quiddity
Listen to Kirie read from her story 'Congregation of Loons' as broadcast on National Public Radio. Link to audio broadcast. See Kirie's bio in Quiddity.
Kirie Pedersen's Congregation of Loons was published inVol. 4 No. 1 of Quiddity, a multimedia arts venue featuring an international literary journal (print and audio), a public-radio program, and a visiting writer and artist series. Each is produced by Benedictine University in partnership with NPR member/PRI affiliate WUIS, Illinois Public Radio’s hub-station. The print journal, published semi-annually, features exemplary prose, poetry, and artwork from emerging and established writers and artists around the world.
The term quiddity means “the real nature or essence of a thing; that which makes it what it is.” Because those who participate in the arts—crafters, readers, viewers, listeners—are its quiddity, the venue Quiddity seeks not only work from a wide and diverse pool of individuals but also to share that work with a wide audience.
Back at Pulali
Pulali Point, Washington
Being back at Pulali is like being in heaven, or what some may experience from taking a drug. Today it snowed, sleeted, rained, and then the sun struck, creating a billion sparkles outlining every leaf, and a translucence of light as the mist rose from the tree trunks.
Walking here means straight up a steep hillside first, on paths that lead directly from the house. I walk for miles because I can't get enough of the beauty, fresh air, shore birds, bald eagles, tiny birds. I feel a sort of a heaviness or weight of breath. And of course it's great to live in a house where I designed every square inch, used recycled materials where I could, and scavenged everything. It fits me. It's familiar.
After about a week in Manhattan, you feel the weight of all the other people, their stories, their deaths speeding by in ambulances. The pedestrians or bicyclists or runners crashing into you if you don’t look lively. The never-ending noise.
Now, I am looking out my window at the waxing gibbous moon, the gray water. I wish I knew a word for the shade of green of the moss right when it's starting up freshly in spring. I want to pet it. I want to lie down in it and roll around. I want to pray to it. I want to know its name.
Read ‘Honored Guests’ in ElevenEleven
Read 'Honored Guests' by Kirie Pedersen in ElevenEleven #10, Journal of Literature & Art
