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Can Story Turn Trauma Into Life?

TW: historical trauma, divergent speech, privileged ignorance and denial  The purpose of my life seems to be: to intelligently design it. But the English I received to begin making anything of this world seemed to deal primarily with products, quantities, and social status, while what I experienced on a daily basis growing up very largely consisted of trauma, abuse, and loneliness.  I’m not even talking about acute trauma, physical or sexual abuse, or physical abandonment or neglect by caregivers, although these experiences also seem to be so widespread as to constitute primary features of our society.  I’m just talking about the interstices here: what the average person like myself experienced in between thinking of myself as a normal average happy-enough American kid, allowed to run free in the culture and raise myself however I liked, wondering why adults seem so unhappy and why no one follows the rules they tell everyone else to follow. Why people lie and change the s...
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Real Talk about Materialism

Materialism: ism. anything I can use as an excuse not to be free in my life You and I both know that the first moments of the morning are the hardest part of the day. These are the moments when any fleeting dreams make their generative absence felt, and the hardened concepts of a lifetime come crashing in to settle on the disappointed heart. It's an emotional moment. However, if you are anything like me, you learned along with your first words that this is not a time to feel into experience. This is a time to jump out of bed and beat back against the aches and pains of existence by gulping down hot eggs and outracing your best time to work in someone else's company, to serve the ideals of someone more powerful, who knows more, and deserves your lifetime more than you do. In a way, it's a miracle that anyone taught up in a society so married to habit as I believe ours is could come to question this behavior at all. It seems so normal, and normal is king. What's al...
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The Creston Auction

I walk on hardened mud along a long road through the tree farm and then step between the horizontal wires of the fence. I have a smile on my face, a curious smile, because I can already hear the auctioneers' voices floating on the wind, and I have always had a curious feeling about auctioneers. I'm also smiling because I'm coming to the auction from the rear, on foot. Even the people from Creston probably have to drive to get to the Creston Auction. I am cool. And smart. Cool and smart. I wander across the prairie grass between the electric fence and the auction in the Creston schoolyard, between rows of trucks and cars, some tractors, a fire engine, numbered tags tied to their windshield wipers. They will be up for auction tomorrow. I don't know what any of them might be worth. I feel like my vision is blurred, or as though I am walking past large signs covered in symbols I have never seen before. I walk past people who can read the signs, people who are looking unde...
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Reaching

a new level of tea drinking. Possibly related: increased longevity when it comes to viewing movies while standing.
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Secret Ingredients

As I dump Rice Krispies into tonight's salad, I wonder to myself whether all those weird things that my grandpa used to do, such as cutting pizza with scissors, were once just some kind of running joke that forgot it was a joke. Will anyone remember that my jokes are jokes when I'M that old? Will I? Snap crackle pop.
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Hot Tub Man

Several people in Hot Springs, MT, have small businesses selling access to their outdoor mineral pools, which tend to run pretty dang warm. Anyone can go lounge around in them, provided they have about five bucks. Two days ago, my mom and I drove about an hour from Arlee to give our five bucks to Leroy, who sits by his pool and chills most of the day, every day. Out front is a large sculpture made of giant bare barkless branches sticking straight up out of a deep pile of river rocks. The snow lining the clearings on the mountains shines in the sun to the northeast. Cold air coming down from the slopes rattles the chain link fence. Leroy's house is all the way back in town, about four blocks away. He drives back home for lunch or to get more cigarettes, but his truck climbs up the hill to the pool again soon enough, because he has to make sure he's collecting all his rightful dollars. "These folks are gonna flee," Leroy says, leaning back in his chair again. "...
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Easy Mistakes to Avoid #1

In the morning, after you jump on the mini trampoline you keep under your bed, try not to speed out the door into the cold and drive away thinking, "man, it's so hot out here!" Because it's not hot, it's just that you've been jumping up and down for ten minutes and you're even sweating a little bit. Tell you what: if you can't stop yourself from speeding out the door like that, since it is pretty fun to feel so carefree and ready to go, at least stick a jacket in the trunk of your car for later. If you don't, you'll be sorry, or at least pretty chilly. TRUST ME.
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