#78: RESTORATION FIBER SONG

for the survivors 

Go back to where you grew up. Don’t let anyone know you’re coming if there’s anyone to let know. I went back, and the most important thing is to not write a single line of memoir, no autobiographical writing whatsoever. RESISTANCE is in the making, true resistance of the self. Immerse yourself with all the ways you felt about the world when living back there. Take notes without taking down memories, especially if you were suicidal. Where were you when you first researched the least painful way to go, the way that leaves no mess behind? Where were you when you finally realized it was impossible to not leave a mess behind? Go there and write about anything but this place, and write about what it’s like to write about anything but this place.

There is a taste from your childhood. Find it, the taste you know well, a kind of candy or cake from a store out there. Take it to the river. You were loneliest by the river once many years ago. Go be there again. Be alone with your delicious childhood treat and smell it for a very long time. Write and keep writing without acknowledging the cake. Now REFUSE to eat it, and throw it in the river!! Write about something you love drowning as you watch it rush away with the current. This feels horrible because it is. Happiness is the place you went to after leaving when you were old enough and brave enough to leave. Go home, to the home where you made yourself happiest, and leave this broken spirit behind, unsated, untasted, and completely unwritten.