Newsletter from Jay Wilcox - October 2020: On History, Agony

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears... in rain."

-Roy Batty, Blade Runner

I was in Mrs. Cohen's sixth-grade language-arts class when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. At lunch, conspiracy theories swirled. The Chinese were attacking! Timothy McVeigh was back from the dead! Kids' parents pulled them from class, teachers consoling us while knowing nothing themselves. I rode the bus home and saw my dad sitting on the house's front steps, waiting for me with a lost look. Almost like he didn't even know how to keep existing in his own home.

I cried watching the news. I watched all the way past my bedtime and then begged my mom for details she couldn't give--and with my eyes closed, I still saw people jumping to their deaths, vanishing in smoke.

These memories belong to me. They're part of national history, but they're also mine, and I find myself weirdly protective of such tragedy. In the GED classes I teach, 9/11 constitutes a few lines in our history textbook. Young students memorize the name Osama bin Laden and see maybe one low-resolution photo of the towers. We discuss the War on Terror as it relates to reading and notetaking strategies--ways of holding text at a manageable distance.

With clinical detachment, I sometimes relate my 9/11 story. I hold back my heartbeat, my tingling sweat. How can history make me nervous? The class gets plenty of time to read and reread, reviewing keywords, context clues. We build outlines--new homes for our notes, webs and charts and tidy tables--and maybe such studious silence is what history sounds like as it hardens. Pens scratch. Keys clack everything into place.

When did grown adults become younger than me?

I age, and now things like Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombings and the MLK/Kennedy assassinations hurt my heart. I mentioned to an older coworker that I'd visited Vietnam, and with a whimsically sad expression he replied, "That would have meant something different when I was your age." To my students, I'm an elder--but to my elders, I'm a student, a removed sympathizer, and damn if it isn't easy to feel alone. With COVID and next month's elections--with protests and riots, family members with whom we may or may not bed on speaking terms--the present feels permanent, sweltering. Some day, youths will organize this part of my life. They'll highlight main ideas and make bullet points, boiling stuff down, stripping away my details. My tears in rain are the next generation's meteorological data. How did I get locked outside?

I was born in 1990. In grad school, I attended an 80s-themed party and joked with a baby-boomer classmate that of course I remembered the 80s! "Go Reagan!" I exclaimed--nervous, unable to summon literally any other buzzword. He looked at me with horror and punched me hard on the arm.

Maybe context is a clenched fist--something we try desperately to thump into someone else, a bruise we can't leave. I didn't white-knuckle my way through the AIDS epidemic. Any relevant pain comes only by proxy--and similarly, it's hard to respect thoughts on 9/11 from people who will never remember 9/10. They didn't cry like I did. They listen politely to my stories, but my memories leave no marks.

Will today be remembered in benign soundbites? "Donald J. Trump ran a populist campaign and differentiated himself from the political elite through his fiery and exciting language..." "COVID-19 proved challenging to global infrastructure..." "The 2010s were marked by societal upheaval and a rise in populism..." What toothless trivia awaits our textbook? Surviving current events takes so much compression, a crushing compartmentalization of emotions. Maybe future students can help me unpack and label everything--all my remembered rage and dread threaded through comprehension exercises. We'll read for meaning. We'll highlight context clues, memories bright but flat.

Hold tight to tragedy. What's highlighted can never be erased, and what settles to the ground is more than dust.

Infinite Regards,

Jay

P.S. - Earlier this month, I finished the first draft of my new novel, tentatively titled Motel Rituals. In November, I plan to reread and revise this thing with the help of my fiancee Hannah. Will send updates! In the meantime, I hope you've been well and safe. You're always welcome to write back.