Carmen Maria Machado – value of proof

“What is the value of proof? What does it mean for something to be true? If a tree falls in the woods and pins a wood thrush to the earth, and she shrieks and shrieks but no one hears her, did she make a sound? Did she suffer? Who’s to say” Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

The Body Keeps the Score 1

“Trauma almost invariably involves not being seen, not being mirrored, and not being taken into account.” Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

The Water Dancer

“I had, by then, done my share of reading on Philadelphia, so I knew that, in another time, when the Task was here in Philadelphia, the city had fallen victim to a fever. And among the men who combatted this fever was Benjamin Rush, a famous doctor, which is hard to countenance given the theory he put forth in defense …

In the Dream House – etymology of archive

“The word archive Jacques Derrida tells us, comes from the ancient Greek work “the house of the ruler.” When I first learned about this etymology, I was taken with the use of house (a lover of haunted house stories, I’m a sucker for architecture metaphors), but it is the power, the authority, that is the most telling element. What is …

In the Dream House – Archive 1

“But the nature of archival silence is that certain people’s narratives and their nuances are swallowed by history; we see only what pokes through because it is sufficiently salacious for the majority to pay attention.” Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

Sonia Sanchez

Poem for July 4, 1994 It is essential that Summer be grafted tobones marrow earth clouds blood theeyes of our ancestors.It is essential to smell the beginningwords where Washington, Madison, Hamilton,Adams, Jefferson assembled amid cries of:        “The people lack of information”       “We grow more and more skeptical”       “This Constitution is a triple-headed monster”  …