Memory Police Quotes

No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?

Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,

Memories are a lot tougher than you might think. Just like the hearts that hold them.

A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It's much like your memory, in that sense.

My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

If you read a novel to the end, then it’s over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I’d much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance.

I don’t know. Maybe there’s a place out there where people whose hearts aren’t empty can go on living.

When you lost your voice, you lost the ability to make sense of yourself.

In general,” he continued, “most things you worry about end up being no more than that—just worries.

Time is a great healer. It just flows on all of its own accord.

Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

His soul is too dense. If he comes out, he'll dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly. I suppose my job is to go on holding him here at the bottom of the sea.

People—and I’m no exception—seem capable of forgetting almost anything, much as if our island were unable to float in anything but an expanse of totally empty sea.

No matter how careful we are, we all leave behind little bits of ourselves as we go about our lives. Hair, sweat, fingernails, tears…any of which can be tested. No one can escape.

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.) The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself.

They may be nothing more than scraps of paper, but they capture something profound. Light and wind and air, the tenderness or joy of the photographer, the bashfulness or pleasure of the subject. You have to guard these things forever in your heart. That’s why photographs are taken in the first place.

Maybe there’s a place out there where people whose hearts aren’t empty can go on living.

I suppose memories live here and there in the body. But they're invisible, aren't they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone. If no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.

I thought I could hear the sound of my memory burning that night.

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

Your heart and mine are being pulled apart to such different, distant places. Yours is overflowing with warmth and life and sounds and smells, but mine is growing cold and hard at a terrifying pace. At some point it will break into a thousand pieces, shards of ice that will dissolve.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, “Find your left eye,” I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

When the surface of your soul begins to stir, I imagine you want to capture the sensation in writing.

I didn’t want you to remember this day because of the scarf. So I thought instead you could remember it as the day your Granny broke into a zoo—” “And escaped from a hospital,” Elsa says with a grin. “And escaped from a hospital,” says Granny with a grin. “And threw turds at the police.” “Actually, it was soil! Or mainly soil, anyway.” “Changing memories is a good superpower, I suppose.” Granny shrugs. “If you can’t get rid of the bad, you have to top it up with more goody stuff.

No matter how careful we are, we all leave behind little bits of ourselves as we go about our lives.

I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes.

Maybe there's a place out there where people whose hearts aren't empty can go on living.

If spring never comes, does that mean summer won’t either? How will the crops grow when the fields are covered with snow?

In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...

I suspect the only reason I’ve been able to go on writing is that I’ve had your heart by my side all along. — Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police, transl. Stephen Snyder (Pantheon, 2019)

I sometimes wonder what I'd see if I could hold your heart in my hands," I told him. "I imagine it fitting perfectly in my palms, soft and slippery, like gelatin that hasn't quite set. It might wobble at the slightest touch, but I sense I'd need to hold it carefully, so it wouldn't slip through my fingers. I also imagine the warmth of the thing. It's usually hidden deep inside, so it's much warmer than the rest of me. I close my eyes and sink into that warmth, and when I do, the sensations of all the things that have disappeared come back to me. I can feel all the things you remember, there in my hands. Doesn't that sound marvelous?

He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit." If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

Even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.’ - R

And what will happen if words disappear?

It's the most beautiful disappearance ever.

But what if human beings themselves disappear?” I asked.

A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much.

I don't really know why I'm crying. I can't explain it myself, much less stop it.

Important things remain important things, no matter how much the world changes.

After sitting for so long in the ruined cabin, the objects we had taken must have been shocked when we pulled them out into the world. I could almost sense their fear, coming through the bags.

Inspector Tinou sat silent. The Greek police department did not welcome interference from other countries in their affairs. Particularly Americans. They are always too-sou, so sure of themselves.

On May 25, something unexpected happened. Police opened the school up so families of the library victims could walk through the scene. This served two functions: victims could face the crime scene with their loved ones, and revisiting the room might jar loose memories or clarify confusion. Three senior investigators stood by to answer questions and observe.

When you lost your voice, you lost the ability to make sense of yourself. But don’t worry. You’ll be staying right here. You’ll live among the fading voices trapped in these typewriters, and I’ll be here with you, giving you instructions. Nothing too difficult.

Memories don't just pile up—they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord. Though the process, for me, is quite different from what happens to the rest of you when something disappears from the island.

You have to stop worrying about things like that. The disappearances are beyond our control. They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway, someday, so what’s the difference? We simply have to leave things to fate.

you read a novel to the end, then it’s over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I’d much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

Allí donde se queman los libros, se acaba quemando también persona

And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.’ - R

On Memorial Day 1927, a march of some 1,000 Klansmen through the New York City borough of Queens turned into a brawl with the police. Several people wearing Klan hoods were arrested, one of them a young real estate developer named Fred Trump.

Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all.

But even if your parents were ardent supporters of the IRA, there were reasons not to tell them that you had joined. If the police or the army broke down the door to interrogate them, the less they knew, the better.

What can the people on this island create?” I went on. “A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads…Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing—and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?

But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.

I stood at the window, where I once stood with my father looking out through binoculars, and even now small winged creatures occasionally flitted by, but they were no more than reminders that birds mean nothing at all to me anymore.

Perhaps this was just evidence that his body was adapting to the secret room. Perhaps it was necessary to rid oneself of everything that was superfluous in order to immerse completely in this airless, soundproof, narrow space shrouded in the fear of discovery and arrest. In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away.

The best thing to do when someone is trying to argue with you is to repeatedly state "Stay Away" and video record the entire event. You may need that video for the police afterwords when the aggressor starts fabricating fantasies about the event.

The traces of my father’s presence, which I had done my best to preserve, had vanished, replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled. I stood in the middle of that emptiness, feeling myself on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth.

Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ 

I stood in the middle of that emptiness, feeling myself on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth

—unable to rid herself of her memories. Poor thing.

in reserve for the most important thing: the present.

Your voice is trapped inside this machine. It's not broken, it's just been sealed off now that it no longer has a purpose.

Somehow, I have the feeling my voice may come back one day if I study the letters imprinted on the used ribbon.

And what will happen if words disappear? I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true.

Closed in the hidden room, I continued to disappear.

And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.

Memories don't just pile up - they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord.

There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories?

You’ll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life.

The real me is disappearing as we speak. Slowly but surely being sucked into thin air.

Memories do not change the law.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Too often the survivor is seen by [himself or] herself and others as "nuts," "crazy," or "weird." Unless her responses are understood within the context of trauma. A traumatic stress reaction consists of *natural* emotions and behaviors in response to a catastrophe, its immediate aftermath, or memories of it. These reactions can occur anytime after the trauma, even decades later. The coping strategies that victims use can be understood only within the context of the abuse of a child. The importance of context was made very clear many years ago when I was visiting the home of a Holocaust survivor. The woman's home was within the city limits of a large metropolitan area. Every time a police or ambulance siren sounded, she became terrified and ran and hid in a closet or under the bed. To put yourself in a closet at the sound of a far-off siren is strange behavior indeed—outside of the context of possibly being sent to a death camp. Within that context, it makes perfect sense. Unless we as therapists have a good grasp of the context of trauma, we run the risk of misunderstanding the symptoms our clients present and, hence, responding inappropriately or in damaging ways.

Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp. The words that came from my mother's mouth thrilled me, like the names of little girls from distant countries or new species of plants. As I listened to her talk, it made me happy to imagine a time when all these things had a place here on the island.

I’m a lot of things, Spatchcock, but ‘beloved-of-law-enforcement’ is not one of them. They’ll just say that it’s my own damn fault again and send me on my way. Besides, the last time I was at a police station I was quite rude to them. I think I threw a lamp at the custody sergeant. Do you have a light?

If I am in a state of becoming, it has no endpoint. I imagine replacing the memories of everyone I've ever spoken to with the impression that they have only ever seen me as a being clothed in light. In the early part of the twentieth century, homophobes and eugenicists joined forces to study what they called inversion, an early term for homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and transness. They believed they could read and police queerness on the body. Maybe this is why I don't want to make myself legible. I want to erase the meanings that have been ascribed to my breath, to my sweat, to my hair and fat and skin. I trace the green veins in my neck that branch down into my breasts as feathers. I am painting myself as the bird that, to the world outside this room, does not exist. I draw myself clothed in wings and tell myself that even the angels are sexless.

The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear. From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear with their own hands.

I suppose memories live here and there in the body," the old man said, moving his hand from his chest to the top of his head. "But they're invisible, aren't they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed. But I suppose you're right when you say we should do everything we can to bring back memories of the things that have disappeared.

goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?

Too often, the anthropologist takes on the role of police detective, discovering what is "hidden," assembling "evidence" to make a strong "case"... But sometimes what is called for is not an "investigator" at all, but an attentive listener.

He says, "It's just a hat." But it's not just a hat. It makes Jess think of racism and hatred and systemic inequality, and the Ku Klux Klan, and plantation-wedding Pinterest boards, and lynchings, and George Zimmerman, and the Central Park Five, and redlining, and gerrymandering and the Southern strategy, and decades of propaganda and Fox News and conservative radio, and rabid evangelicals, and rape and pillage and plunder and plutocracy and money in politics and the dumbing down of civil discourse and domestic terrorism and white nationalists and school shootings and the growing fear of a nonwhite, non-English-speaking majority and the slow death of the social safety net and conspiracy theory culture and the white working class and social atomism and reality television and fake news and the prison-industrial complex and celebrity culture and the girl in fourth grade who told Jess that since she--Jess--was "naturally unclean" she couldn't come over for birthday cake, and executive compensation, and mediocre white men, and the guy in college who sent around an article about how people who listen to Radiohead are smarter than people who listen to Missy Elliott and when Jess said "That's racist" he said "No,it's not," and of bigotry and small pox blankets and gross guys grabbing your butt on the subway, and slave auctions and Confederate monuments and Jim Crow and fire hoses and separate but equal and racist jokes that aren't funny and internet trolls and incels and golf courses that ban women and voter suppression and police brutality and crony capitalism and corporate corruption and innocent children, so many innocent children, and the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and birthers and flat-earthers and states' rights and disgusting porn and the prosperity gospel and the drunk football fans who made monkey sounds at Jess outside Memorial Stadium, even though it was her thirteenth birthday, and Josh--now it makes her think of Josh.

I mean that we must figure out, together, what we are willing to lie about for the sake of a clean memory. The story ends with no sinners, because it must. Everyone is washed clean. A city holds its breath for decades, waiting for something good to descend, and then it does. This, I believe, means that everything resets, and so does everyone within the container of this glorious happening. To enter the church of triumph, everyone must be absolved, and so everyone is. The pistols vanish from the waistbands of cops, from the sock drawers of dealers. What you thought to be blood, dried on the concrete of the park, is instead handprints left by children who pressed their hands into dark paint and left behind a symbol of their living. Yes, living, the children are alive, even the ones thought to be dead. Even the ones who were on the news, even the ones some of us marched in the streets for and broke glass windows for and threw ourselves into police shields for. In the end of this story, there are tattoos that vanish from the skin of those who got the names of the gone-too-soon inked on them, because no one is gone too soon. Yes, if we are to cure ourselves of curses, let us cure ourselves of all the curses tonight, let the lake cough its thick fog upon the people and let them be unmoved by the sweat. What is sweat but decoration, jewelry upon the extended arms beckoning people toward a revival?

But nothing happened there now of a nature to provoke a disturbance. There were no complaints to the management or the police, and the dark glory of the upper galleries was a legend in such memories as that of the late Emiel Kroger and the present Pablo Gonzales, and one by one, of course, those memories died out and the legend died out with them. Places like the Joy Rio and the legends about them make one more than usually aware of the short bloom and the long fading out of things. ("The Mysteries of the Joy Rio")

My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain,

I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ ” I said. “Who said that?” asked the old man, speaking softly and bringing his hand to his chin. “I’ve forgotten, though I’m sure it was someone important. But I wonder if that’s where we’re headed.

Much of our work today has entered its own B-17 phase. Substantial parts of what software designers, financial managers, firefighters, police officers, lawyers, and most certainly clinicians do are now too complex for them to carry out reliably from memory alone. Multiple fields, in other words, have become too much airplane for one person to fly. Yet it is far from obvious that something as simple as a checklist could be of substantial help.

Not only did I believe that humans were selfish and base, I also knew that plenty of them were actually bad – content to destroy lives for their own gain. I’d seen Korean-Chinese expose North Korean escapees to the police in return for money. I’d known people who’d been trafficked by other humans as if they were livestock. That world was familiar to me. All my life, random acts of kindness had been so rare that they’d stick in my memory, and I’d think: how strange.

I wiped my palms together, brushing the petals that had stuck to them back into the stream. Petals with frilled edges, pale ones, vivid ones, petals with the calyx still attached. They all clung for a moment to the bricks of the wash landing, but in no time at all they were caught up in the stream again and melted into the mass.

Do you know where you were on Thursday evening at about eight o'clock last week, and who you were with, and what you were doing? Are you absolutely certain beyond any shadow of a doubt? Would you bet your life on it? If there is any possibility—no matter how slim or remote—that you could possibly be mistaken about such a thing, you are the kind of person who should never agree to talk to the police under just about any circumstances for as long as you live. And that includes practically everybody.

Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 1984 by George Orwell A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki The Overstory by Richard Powers The Farm by Joanne Ramos The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

When I stand here in front of the cabinet, my heart feels like a silkworm slumbering in its cocoon.

Your voice is trapped inside this machine. It’s not broken, it’s just been sealed off now that it no longer has a purpose.

You can’t write with your head. I want you to write with your hand,

Döden försvann efter hand tillsammans med tiden allt längre bort i fjärran, och minnet var det enda som blev kvar, minnet som är det allra mest värdefulla vi har.

Orang yang membakar buku pada akhirnya akan membakar manusia.

Madmen, criminals, and rapists! Isn’t it fantastic? All the romantic proposals I’ve ever got from anybody. Somebody up there has an extremely dark sense of humour.

It must feel much like a typewriter key falling back into place after rising for a moment to strike the page.

Hur tomt ett hjärta än är försöker det ändå förnimma något.

and I found myself unable to resist turning around to see whether my footsteps were following me as I made my way across the field of white.

His face was so covered in wrinkles that it was impossible to tell from his expression whether he was laughing or crying. I pressed my hand against his back.

The order had come in a coarse pale purple envelope.

If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

Men who start by burning books end by burning other men

Ad what will happen if words disappear? I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true

I'll keep you safe, here in my secret room.

Wie sehr wir uns auch bemühten, den anderen zu verstehen, es gab immer etwas, das sich unserem Verständnis entzog. Und je mehr wir darüber redeten, desto deprimierender wurde es.

Don’t be silly. I’ll just pick you up and carry you, like a princess,” he said, holding out his arms toward me.

And what will happen if words disappear?” I

No one can erase the stories.

You can’t write with your head. I want you to write with your hand.

I remember hearing a saying long ago: ‘Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,’ ” I said.

But of course I suppose it’s not that unusual nowadays for someone to disappear.

A mind that we cannot see has created a story that we can.

[N]o matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it.

You write novels. You of all people must know that you cannot choose between them, divide them into categories. They are all useful in their own way.

The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can stop only when everything is in ashes.

Amid the luxurious freshness of Ipanema each building has its own secret police.

It’s an excellent idea, killing two creatures with one stone.

When they were gone, a calm fell as though the air itself were breathing with infinite care. The owners turned for home, empty cages in hand. And that was how the birds disappeared.

To be sure, the judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was 'empty talk'--except that they thought the emptiness was feigned, and that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts which, though hideous, were not empty. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés [ ] each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. Whether writing his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.

If we do find something,' said the old man, struggling to find words, 'what do we do then?' 'Nothing in particular. We're all free to do as we choose with our own memories,' R said.

You can’t write with your head. I want you to write with your hand,” he said. It was rare for him to make a pronouncement like this, so I found myself simply nodding in silence. Then I stretched my hand toward him, fingers extended. “That’s right. That’s where the story should come from,” he said, but he looked away, as though he had seen into the most vulnerable part of my body.

It may be a few days from now or a few weeks, but it will come. And I’m frightened. Not because I’ll disappear and cease to exist, but because I’ll have to leave you. The thought terrifies me.

I couldn’t possibly say,” he said. “If you read a novel to the end, then it’s over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I’d much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

The memories seem to come in layers. For example, the first memory might be of incest; then they remember robes and candles; next they realize that their father or mother or both were present when they were being abused. Another layer will be the memory of seeing other people hurt and even killed. Then they remember having seen babies killed. Another layer is realizing that they participated in the sacrifices. One of the most painful memories may be that they even sacrificed their own baby. With each layer of memory comes another set of problems with which they must deal. — Glenn L. Pace; "Ritualistic Child Abuse," memo

In years past, I had carefully studied the stems, leaves, and branches and had read the tags that identified the different varieties, but I realized now that I was already unable to remember what this thing called a rose had looked like.

If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it’s completely hollowed out, we’ll all disappear without a trace. Don’t you ever feel that way?

I suppose memories live here and there in the body. But they're invisible, aren't they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes is you leave it alone. If no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.

—Me alivia que sea la voz lo último que vaya a desaparecer —dije—. De esta forma, me veo con mayor predisposición a afrontar el instante final de la manera más tranquila y serena posible, sin tener que pasar por un calvario de dolor, sufrimiento y miseria

The objects in my palm seemed to cower there, absolutely still, like little animals in hibernation, sending me no signal at all. They often left me with an uncertain feeling, as though I were trying to make images of the clouds in the sky out of modeling clay.

Freedom is not as free as is generally thought: it produces antibodies which rebel against it. Truth, too, is threatened from within, like a state battling with its own police force. If values enjoyed total immunity, they would be as lethal as a scientific truth.

O günü düşündükcə ürəyimə bir ağırlıq çökdü. Kapitan köşkündə pankek yediyimiz günü xatırlaya biləcəkdimmi? Sığınacaq qurmaq planlarımızı, göyərtədə məhəccərlərə söykənib gün batımını izlədiyimiz anları bir gün unudacaqdımmı? Bom-boş qalan qəlbim bunlara tab gətirə bilməzdi…

I’d imagine you’d be uncomfortable, with your heart full of so many forgotten things.” “No, that’s not really a problem. A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa The Nix by Nathan Hill No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern The Overstory by Richard Powers

La expresión de sus rostros, sin embargo no reflejaba angustia. Sus miradas se alzaban hasta algún punto del horizonte y sus ojos se mostraban tan serenos como la lisa superficie de una laguna perdida en el corazón del bosque, bajo la cual se oculta una multitud de recuerdos secretos.

Having written this phrase, I set down my pencil. My new novel wasn’t going very well. I seemed to be writing in circles, going backward, or running into dead ends, with no idea what should come next. Still, I often encountered this sort of writer’s block, and I no longer took much notice of it.

Igual que algo que se hunde y reposa sobre el fondo de un lago al que no llega la luz, así escapan los recuerdos a nuestro alcance. Pero si alargas el brazo lo suficiente bajo la superficie del agua, tus dedos rozarán aquello que los ojos no ven. Cógelo y tráelo a la superficie, donde la luz volverá a iluminarlo.

Every vehicle with a GPS is tracked by satellite, and the history of its travels is archived in the million-square-foot Utah Data Center of the National Security Agency, in its ever-growing cloud. The NSA is a jealous guardian of the knowledge that it has acquired, and police agencies do not have routine access to it.

I sometimes wonder what I’d see if I could hold your heart in my hands, […] I imagine it fitting perfectly in my palms, soft and slippery, like gelatin that hasn’t quite set. It might wobble at the slightest touch, but I sense I’d need to hold it carefully, so it wouldn’t slip through my fingers. I also imagine the warmth of the thing. It’s usually hidden deep inside, so it’s much warmer than the rest of me. I close my eyes and sink into that warmth, and when I do, the sensations of all the things that have disappeared come back to me. I can feel all the things you remember, there in my hands. — Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police (Pantheon, 2019)

ESAELP GNITTIPS ON This mysterious decree would incite me to defy it and spit on the ground at once, but because the police were stationed two steps away in front of the Governor's Mansion, I'd just stare at it uneasily instead. Now I began to fear that spit would suddenly climb out of my throat and land on the ground without my even willing it. But as I knew, spitting was mostly a habit of grown-ups of the same stock as those brainless, weak-willed, insolent children who were always being punished by my teacher. Yes, we would sometimes see people spitting on the streets, or hawking up phlegm because they had no tissues, but this didn't happen often enough to merit a decree of this severity, even outside the Governor's Manson. Later on, when I read about the Chinese spitting pots and discovered how commonplace spitting was in other parts of the world, I asked myself why they'd gone to such lengths to discourage spitting in Istanbul, where it had never been popular.

But they’re invisible, aren’t they? And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed. But I suppose you’re right when you say we should do everything we can to bring back memories of the things that have disappeared.

När jag blundade lyckades jag få en starkare medvetenhet om tomrummet som uppstått i min kropp. Det var fyllt av fullständigt genomskinligt vatten och inte det minsta lilla minnesfragment fanns kvar där. Hans händer rörde idogt om i det vattnet, men det enda som kom upp var små bubblor. Bubblor som genast sprack alldeles ljudlöst.

You must have been working very hard here, with so few distractions.” Mary’s eyes darkened and she looked away. “Not quite as much as I hoped for. At times the loneliness and the unanswered questions can get overwhelming, like very loud voices echoing inside my head, just asking ‘why’ ‘who’ and making me think about my wasted life.

Auf jeden Fall sind Erinnerungen unsichtbar, nicht wahr? Wie wundervoll sie auch sein mögen, sie verschwinden einfach, wenn niemand sie beachtet. Nicht einmal wir selbst sind in der Lage, das wahre Wesen einer Erinnerung zu erfassen. Sie hinterlassen keine Spuren. Es gibt keinen greifbaren Beweis, dass sie wirklich existiert haben.

Life had coincidences. Serendipity abounded. Wrong place, wrong time. It came as the result of seven billion people jostling each other within the span of a single planet. But there was an unwritten rule in police work: There are no coincidences. All you needed was more in-depth investigation to show that there are no coincidences.

The family is a police state," the Visitor said, describing how minuscule stages lit up inside her, repeating key scenes from her life. "Do people remember only what they can endure, or distort memories until they can endure them?" After a long silence, A. said: "Childhood is a city you never leave. In Berlin's past, we seek our own.

Chasing is in police DNA memory, like Labradors running after sticks,” said Serge. “They probably don’t even know why they do it. They just put the lights on and go, and a while later the partner who isn’t behind the wheel says, ‘Why are we stopping?’ ‘Something inside just told me to because there’s a really cool crash up ahead. It’s weird; I can’t explain it.

Ibland sätter jag händerna mot väggen och försöker föreställa mig hur det är utanför. Jag tänker att det kanske kan gå att uppfatta någonting genom händernas beröring med väggen. Sådant som vindriktning, kyla, fukt, platsen du är på, vattnets porlande floden. Men det går aldrig. Väggen är bara en vägg. Det finns ingenting bakom den, den är inte sammankopplad med någonting.

Varför rymde du inte? Hon hade ju kunnat hjälpa dig härifrån. Då hade du kunnat bli fri", sa han och rörde vid min haka. "Men det gjorde du inte. Du stannade kvar här. Varför det?" Han frågade mig envist om orsaken. Han borde ju veta mycket väl att en människa som har förlorat orden inte kan förklara några orsaker. Vad var det då han krävde av mig? Jag förblev bara alldeles stel.

A total of 105 patrol officers died on the job in 2012. Less half of those (51) died as the result of violence, and another 48 died in traffic accidents. Between 1961 and 2012, 3,847 cops were murdered and 2,946 died in accidents—averaging about 75 murders and 58 fatal accidents in a typical year. Naturally it is not to be lost sight of that these numbers represent human lives, not widgets or sacks of potatoes. But let’s also remember that there were 4,383 fatal work injuries in 2012. As dangerous professions go, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even in the top ten. In terms of total fatalities, more truck drivers are killed than any other kind of worker (741 in 2012). A better measure of occupational risk, however, is the rate of work-related deaths per 100,000 workers. In 2012, for example, it was 17.4 for truck drivers. At 15.0 deaths per 100,000, policing is slightly less dangerous than being a maintenance worker (15.7) and slightly more dangerous than supervising the gardener (14.7). The highest rate of fatalities is among loggers at 127.8 per 100,000, just ahead of fishers at 117.0. The rate for all occupations, taken together, is 3.2 per 100,000 workers. Where are the headlines, the memorials, the honor guards, and the sorrowful renderings of Taps for these workers? Where are the mayoral speeches, the newspaper editorials, the sober reflections that these brave men and women died, and that others risk their lives daily, so that we might continue to enjoy the benefits of modern society?

memory!” Never, ever forgive the parents that. Remembered our last send-off one drizzly autumn afternoon at Audley End, Adrian was in uniform, Pater clasping him. Days of bunting and cheering were long over—later heard Military Police were escorting conscripts to Dunkirk to deter mass desertions. All those Adrians jammed like pilchards in cemeteries throughout eastern France, western Belgium, beyond. We

It’s true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.

It’s true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry.” He

It became more difficult to breathe. I looked around. My body was now included among the objects arranged on the floor. I lay there between the music box and the harmonica, my two legs protruding at odd angles, my hands crossed on my chest, my eyes lowered. In the same way he had wound the spring on the music box or blown into the harmonica, I imagined R would now caress my body in order to call forth memories.

The famous speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, included the sentence: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Today's left-wing, through identity politics, affirmative-action policies, and hiring quotas, has shattered that dream.

Matthews asked: “How intimate was your relationship with Dr. Miller?” “Intimate?” Phil still couldn’t grasp what they were asking. “My colleague is asking if you’d ever had sex with Dr. Miller before that evening.” Jones added curtly. “I’ve never…We’ve never…We’re friends. We’d never had sex before that evening, and we didn’t have sex that evening either.” “How do you explain your semen in her sheets then, Mr. Marshall?

If I am in a state of becoming, it has no endpoint. I imagine replacing the memories of everyone I've ever spoken to with the impression that they have only ever seen me as a being clothed in light. In the early part of the twentieth century, homophobes and eugenicists joined forces to study what they called inversion, an early term for homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and transness. They believed they could read and police queerness on the body. Maybe this is why I don't want to make myself legible. I want to erase the meanings that have been ascribed to my breath, to my sweat, to my hair and fat and skin. I trace the green veins in my neck that branch down into my breasts as feathers. I am painting myself as the bird that, to the world outside this room, does not exist. I draw myself clothed in wings and tell myself that even the angels are sexless.

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that gray vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History. First, there was the heaving oil, heavy as chaos; then, likea light at the end of a tunnel, the lantern of a caravel, and that was Genesis. Then there were the packed cries, the shit, the moaning: Exodus. Bone soldered by coral to bone, mosaics mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow, that was the Ark of the Covenant. Then came from the plucked wires of sunlight on the sea floor the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage, as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women, and those were the ivory bracelets of the Song of Solomon, but the ocean kept turning blank pages looking for History. Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors who sank without tombs, brigands who barbecued cattle, leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore, then the foaming, rabid maw of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal, and that was Jonah, but where is your Renaissance? Sir, it is locked in them sea sands out there past the reef's moiling shelf, where the men-o'-war floated down; strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself. It's all subtle and submarine, through colonnades of coral, past the gothic windows of sea fans to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed, blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen; and these groined caves with barnacles pitted like stone are our cathedrals, and the furnace before the hurricanes: Gomorrah. Bones ground by windmills into marl and cornmeal, and that was Lamentations - that was just Lamentations, it was not History; then came, like scum on the river's drying lip, the brown reeds of villages mantling and congealing into towns, and at evening, the midges' choirs, and above them, the spires lancing the side of God as His son set, and that was the New Testament. Then came the white sisters clapping to the waves' progress, and that was Emancipation - jubilation, O jubilation - vanishing swiftly as the sea's lace dries in the sun, but that was not History, that was only faith, and then each rock broke into its own nation; then came the synod of flies, then came the secretarial heron, then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote, fireflies with bright ideas and bats like jetting ambassadors and the mantis, like khaki police, and the furred caterpillars of judges examining each case closely, and then in the dark ears of ferns and in the salt chuckle of rocks with their sea pools, there was the sound like a rumour without any echo of History, really beginning.

Ignoring her election victory as evidence that a lot of voters liked her positions, the journalists quoted one person on the street to prove her unpopularity. The random person stated that police were "underpaid," that they were necessary to "keep order," and that he was opposed to their abolition. Where did the intrepid Times reporters unearth this supposedly ordinary person? Outside a memorial for the two police officer at a police station.

—¿Acaso piensas que no son más que unos papelitos con una emulsión química en una de sus caras? Si es así, te equivocas. Son mucho más que eso. Atesoran parte de la vida de las personas. Reflejan la futilidad de un instante; la luz, el viento y el aire de un paisaje; la sonrisa y el azoramiento de la persona fotografiada, y el gozo y amor de quien toma la foto por aquello que fotografía. Por eso precisamente hacemos fotografías y por eso deben conservarse.

The event itself played over in her mind, and the role she'd taken in the police investigation, the things she'd told them - worse, the thing she hadn't - made the panic so bad sometimes that she could hardly breathe. No matter where she went at Greenacres - inside the house or out in the garden - she felt trapped by what she'd seen and done. The memories where everywhere, they were inescapable; made worse because the event that caused them was utterly inexplicable.

1)    The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3)    He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4)    He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7)    He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14)   He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17)   He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship. 20)   He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner. 21)   He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave. 22)   He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise. 23)   He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified. 24)   He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed. 25)   He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions. 26)   He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge. 27)   Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons. 28)   He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”). 29)   He experienced or witnessed violence as a child. 30)   His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

Det var när jag tänkte försöka fortsätta skriva på min roman [...] som jag kom underfund med vad min känsliga reaktion på ordet "maskinskriverska" berodde på. Närmare bestämt var det faktiskt så att jag redan hade förlorat förmågan att läsa romaner. Även om jag lyckades läsa varje ord för sig högt kunde jag inte förstå orden som en sammanhängande berättelse. För mig var det bara tecken som fyllde rutorna på manuskriptpapperen men som inte framkallade några som helst känslor, stämningar eller scenbilder.

A nine-year-old boy, Patrick Rooney, had been sheltering with his family in a back room of their apartment when a round fired by the police pierced the plasterboard walls and struck him in the head. Because intermittent volleys of gunfire continued, the police refused to allow an ambulance to cross the Falls Road. So eventually a man emerged from the flats, frantically waving a white shirt. Beside him, two other men appeared, carrying the boy, with his shattered head. They managed to get Patrick Rooney to an ambulance, but he died a short time later.

It is possible - given absolute control over the media and the police - to rewrite the memories of hundreds of millions of people, if you have a generation to accomplish it in. Almost always, this is done to improve the hold that the powerful have on power, or to serve the narcissism or megalomania or paranoia of national leaders. It throws a monkey wrench into the error-correcting machinery. It works to erase public memory of profound political mistakes, and thus to guarantee their eventual repetition. In our time, with total fabrication of realistic stills, motion pictures, and videotapes technologically within reach, with television in every home, and with critical thinking in decline, restructuring societal memories even without much attention from the secret police seems possible. What I’m imagining here is not that each of us has a budget of memories implanted in special therapeutic sessions by state-appointed psychiatrists, but rather that small numbers of people will have so much control over news stories, history books, and deeply affecting images as to work major changes in collective attitudes.

Much of what I knew had gone through the filter of memory, trauma, self-interest, and my own constantly shifting judgment. I laid all of them out in blocky handwriting on brown sheets of butcher paper taped up to my office wall. Not even dates of death had the automatic legitimacy of simple fact. The official police report for one death, for instance, had been conflated with a two-week old murder whose only connection was the fact that both victims had been salvaged in the city of Manila. The picture was never complete, but it was as close to the truth as I could get.

Keeping the police videos from the public and the press - along with Judge Cahill’s gag order, and his decisions and instructions about the body cam videos - allowed [Attorney General] Ellison and the prosecution to maintain control of the narrative. It might seem obvious now: without the police videos, there was nothing to compare to the viral Facebook video. Since there was no basis for comparison, the viral Facebook video - and freeze-frame screenshots that were used extensively by the media and the Left - were etched into the collective memory of just about everyone in America.

We almost began a perfect conversation, F. said as he turned on the six o'clock news. He turned the radio very loud and began to shout wildly against the voice of the commentator, who was reciting a list of disasters. Sail on, sail on, O Ship of State, auto accidents, births, Berlin, cures for cancer! Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white, and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the Ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present. Do you know how to do this? Do you know how to see the akropolis like the Indians did who never even had one? Fuck a saint, that's how, find a little saint and fuck her over and over in some pleasant part of heaven, get right into her plastic altar, dwell in her silver medal, fuck her until she tinkles like a souvenir music box, until the memorial lights go on for free, find a little saintly faker like Teresa or Catherine Tekakwitha or Lesbia, whom prick never knew but who lay around all day in a chocolate poem, find one of these quaint impossible cunts and fuck her for your life, coming all over the sky, fuck her on the moon with a steel hourglass up your hole, get tangled in her airy robes, suck her nothing juices, lap, lap, lap, a dog in the ether, then climb down to this fat earth and slouch around the fat earth in your stone shoes, get clobbered by a runaway target, take the senseless blows again and again, a right to the mind, piledriver on the heart, kick in the scrotum, help! help! it's my time, my second, my splinter of the shit glory tree, police, fire men! look at the traffic of happiness and crime, it's burning in crayon like the akropolis rose! And so on.

Satan and witches. If they admit they are in league with him, then they are disobeying him (since he forbids them to admit to being witches) and they are spared. Those who protest their innocence are burned. A bus driver who falsely claims to have been assaulted is found guilty of wasting police time. A police spokesman declares: 'We already have so many problems with genuine violent crime. What are things coming to if we have to deal with the fake kind?' It is for this reason that a fake hold-up was in the past punished more severely than a real one, for faking evil is even more serious than evil. The hoax is evil raised to the second power. And faking good? Isn't a fake 'good deed' worse than a bad one?

Det må bara vara små pappersbitar, men det finns något mycket djupt som visar sig i dem. Ljuset, vinden, luften, kärleken och glädjen hos den som fotograferade och förlägenheten och leendet hos den som blev fotograferad. Sådant måste man bevara i sitt hjärta för alltid. Det var därför man tog fotografierna." "Ja, jag förstår. Jag har alltid satt stort värde på fotografierna. När jag tittade på dem väckte de viktiga minnen till liv. Det fick mig att känna en nostalgi som gjorde mig så sorgsen att det värkte i bröstet. I minnenas skog bland endast späda, hjälplösa träd var fotona den säkraste kompassen. Men nu måste jag ge upp. Visst är det vemodigt och svårt att förlora kompassen, men jag har inte kraft nog att hindra saker från att utplånas.

I had of course been terribly sad when my mother and father and my nurse had died. I missed them, and wished I could see them again, and I regretted the times I'd been selfish or cruel when they were alive. But that pain had lessened with the passage of time. Their deaths grew distant with the years, leaving behind only the most precious memories I associated with them. But this time, I had the impression that something was different. In addition to the sadness, I was overcome by a mysterious and menacing anxiety, as though the old man's death had suddenly transformed the very ground under my feet into a soft, unreliable mass. I had been left alone, with no one to comfort me, no one to reach out and take my hand, no one to share the terrible void in my heart.

police officers, like all humans, are subject to a powerful phenomenon that psychologists call confirmation bias. This means that after they have come to a conclusion, especially if it is a conclusion that they have publicly announced (for example, by arresting someone and accusing him of a serious crime), it is very difficult for them to admit that perhaps they have made a terrible mistake. It is much easier and more comfortable for them to convince themselves that they did not make a mistake, and that their initial accusations were correct. Their memories will gladly cooperate in that effort. Even if they are not aware of how it is happening, they might recall nonexistent details to coincide with and corroborate the story they have already begun persuading themselves to believe.

So you really think our hearts are decaying?” “I don’t know whether that’s the right word, but I do know that you’re changing, and not in a way that can be easily reversed or undone. It seems to be leading to an end that frightens me a great deal.” As he spoke, he swiveled the handle of his teacup back and forth. The old man continued to stare at the music box. “An end,” I murmured to myself. It was not as though I had never thought about this. End… conclusion… limit—how many times had I tried to imagine where I was headed, using words like these? But I’d never managed to get very far. It was impossible to consider the problem for very long, before my senses froze and I felt myself suffocating. Nor was it helpful to talk about this with the old man, since he simply repeated over and over that everything would be all right.

The commissar looked around, saw the knapsacks, looked at the books, saw German, French, English and Romanian books. At his request, I explained that I had been a student of languages and literature. After looking around everywhere, he asked Father to come to the chief police station, at five o'clock. I told him that I would come along, since Father didn't know Romanian. He gave us a summons to appear that day. We were greatly alarmed as it was during the deportations. Although we were terribly scared, yet my optimistic side thought that nothing could happen, since we really had no radio. My optimism was a kind of defense, a negation of the evil that loomed all around. On the way to the Siguran ta, it was a very long walk, Father was saying his prayer. I took again the Waterman fountain pen, in case of need, as a small bribe.

It is necessary to make this point in answer to the `iatrogenic' theory that the unveiling of repressed memories in MPD sufferers, paranoids and schizophrenics can be created in analysis; a fabrication of the doctor—patient relationship. According to Dr Ross, this theory, a sort of psychiatric ping-pong 'has never been stated in print in a complete and clearly argued way'. My case endorses Dr Ross's assertions. My memories were coming back to me in fragments and flashbacks long before I began therapy. Indications of that abuse, ritual or otherwise, can be found in my medical records and in notebooks and poems dating back before Adele Armstrong and Jo Lewin entered my life. There have been a number of cases in recent years where the police have charged groups of people with subjecting children to so-called satanic or ritual abuse in paedophile rings. Few cases result in a conviction. But that is not proof that the abuse didn't take place, and the police must have been very certain of the evidence to have brought the cases to court in the first place. The abuse happens. I know it happens. Girls in psychiatric units don't always talk to the shrinks, but they need to talk and they talk to each other. As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson, the marathon runner. Now that I was living back at home, he was again my GP. When Mother bravely told him I was undergoing treatment for MPD/DID as a result of childhood sexual abuse, he buried his head in hands and wept. (Alice refers to her constant infections as a child, which were never recognised as caused by sexual abuse)

The 36 unarmed black male victims of police shootings in 2015 measured against the total black male population (nearly 19 million in mid-2014, Per the Census Bureau) amounts to a per capita rate of 0.0000018 unarmed fatalities by police. In comparison, 52 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed while engaged in such duties as traffic stops and warrant service in 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The FBI counted close to 628,000 full-time law enforcement officers in 2014. Assuming that the number of officers did not markedly increase in 2015, the per capita rate of officers being feloniously killed is 0.000081. The Memorial Fund does not have data on the race of cop-killers in 2015, but applying the historical percentages would yield 21 cops killed by blacks in 2015. An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 0.000033.

In theory, they have equal power over each other Leave this house. Never come back. Or I'll bring the police down on us both. But even I know that love doesn't steer by logic, nor is power distributed evenly. Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves that they need or want. Memories are poor for past failures. Childhoods shine through adult skin, helpfully or not. So do the laws of inheritance that bind a personality. The lovers don't know there's no free will. I haven't heard enough radio drama to know more than that, though pop songs have taught me that they don't feel in December what they felt in May, and that to have a womb may be incomprehensible to those who don't and that the reverse is also true.

But there is one other thing that undoubtedly contributed to the cult of Russia among the English intelligentsia during these years, and that is the softness and security of life in England itself. With all its injustices, England is still the land of habeas corpus, and the overwhelming majority of English people have no experience of violence or illegality. If you have grown up in that sort of atmosphere it is not at all easy to imagine what a despotic régime is like. Nearly all the dominant writers of the ’thirties belonged to the soft-boiled emancipated middle class and were too young to have effective memories of the Great War. To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary executions, imprisonment without trial, etc., etc., are too remote to be terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism because they have no experience of anything except liberalism. Look, for instance, at this extract from Mr. Auden’s poem Spain

Then other memories intruded and a different Robin peeled away from this picture of a safe and ordered past: and there in front of him stood a woman who would not have been out of place in the SIB. This was the Robin who had taken advanced driving courses, who had concussed herself in the pursuit of a killer, who had calmly wrapped her coat like a tourniquet around his bleeding arm after he was stabbed and taken him to hospital. The Robin who had improvised so successfully in interrogating suspects that she had winkled out information that the police had not managed to get, who had invented and successfully embodied Venetia Hall, who had persuaded a terrified young man who wanted his leg amputated to confide in her, who had given Strike a hundred other examples of initiative, resourcefulness and courage that might have turned her into a plain-clothes police officer by now, had she not once walked into a dark stairwell where a bastard in a mask stood waiting.

Drawing aside so as not to impede passersby, he answered. “Oggy?” said his ex-colleague’s voice. “What gives, mate? Why are people sending you legs?” “I take it you’re not in Germany?” said Strike. “Edinburgh, been here six weeks. Just been reading about you in the Scotsman.” The Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police had an office in Edinburgh Castle: 35 Section. It was a prestigious posting. “Hardy, I need a favor,” said Strike. “Intel on a couple of guys. D’you remember Noel Brockbank?” “Hard to forget. Seventh Armoured, if memory serves?” “That’s him. The other one’s Donald Laing. He was before I knew you. King’s Own Royal Borderers. Knew him in Cyprus.” “I’ll see what I can do when I get back to the office, mate. I’m in the middle of a plowed field right now.” A chat about mutual acquaintances was curtailed by the increasing noise of rush-hour traffic. Hardacre promised to ring back once he had had a look at the army records and Strike continued towards the Tube. He got out at Whitechapel station thirty minutes later to find a text message from the man he was supposed to be meeting. Sorry Bunsen cant do today ill give you a bell This was both disappointing and inconvenient, but not a surprise. Considering that Strike was not carrying a consignment of drugs or a large pile of used notes, and that he did not require intimidation or beating, it was a mark of great esteem that Shanker had even condescended to fix a time and place for meeting. Strike’s knee was complaining after a day on his feet, but there were no seats outside the station. He leaned up against the yellow brick wall beside the entrance and called Shanker’s number. “Yeah, all right, Bunsen?” Just as he no longer remembered why Shanker was called Shanker, he had no more idea why Shanker called him Bunsen. They had met when they were seventeen and the connection between them, though profound in its way, bore none of the usual stigmata of teenage friendship.

For the poverty in which my mother and father lived, for the failure of the mill, all the hard times, for the awful sheep, for constant tiredness, thank you, my God! For lips, which I was feeding too much, for the dirty noses of the children, for the guarded sheep, I thank you! Thank you, my God, for the prosecutor and the police commissioner, for the policemen, and for the harsh words of Father Peyramale! For the days in which you came, Mary, for the ones in which you did not come, I will never be able to thank you…only in Paradise. For the slap in the face, for the ridicule, the insults, and for those who suspected me for wanting to gain something from it, thank you, my Lady. For my spelling, which I never learned, for the memory that I never had, for my ignorance and for my stupidity, thank you. For the fact that my mother died so far away, for the pain I felt when my father instead of hugging his little Bernadette called me, “Sister Marie-Bernard”, I thank you, Jesus. I thank you for the heart you gave me, so delicate and sensitive, which you filled with bitterness. For the fact that Mother Josephine proclaimed that I was good for nothing, thank you. For the sarcasm of the Mother Superior: her harsh voice, her injustices, her irony and for the bread of humiliation, thank you. Thank you that I was the privileged one when it came to be reprimanded, so that my sisters said, “How lucky it is not to be Bernadette.” Thank you for the fact that it is me, who was the Bernadette threatened with imprisonment because she had seen you, Holy Virgin; regarded by people as a rare animal; that Bernadette so wretched, that upon seeing her, it was said, “Is that it?” For this miserable body which you gave me, for this burning and suffocating illness, for my decaying tissues, for my de-calcified bones, for my sweats, for my fever, for my dullness and for my acute pains, thank you, my God. And for this soul which you have given me, for the desert of inner dryness, for your night and your lightening, for your silences and your thunders, for everything. For you - when you were present and when you were not—thank you, Jesus.

I looked at R. I needed only to lean slightly in his direction for us to be touching. He raised his hand and brushed away a tear at the corner of my eye with his fingers. They were warm. I watched as my tears fell on his hand. And then he took me in his arms. The silence of the night had returned. It suddenly seemed unbelievable that less than an hour ago the doorbell had rung and boots had stomped across the floor above his room. Now I could feel his heart through his sweater. He embraced me gently, his hands encircling my back as though holding a cloud, and at last my tears stopped. Everything that had happened-shopping in the market, the death of the fish, lighting the candles on the cake, opening the music box, the burning of the datebook-seemed like memories from the distant past. We were entirely in the present. There, behind your heartbeat, have you stored up all my lost memories? I thought this to myself, cheek pressed against R’s chest. If I could, I would have liked to take them out and line them up in front of me one by one. I was sure that any memories that remained inside him would be very much alive, so different from my own, which were few in number and very pale-sodden flower petals sinking into the waves at the bottom of the incinerator.

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain. As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public. The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hed­worth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’. The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corrobo­rating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital. ~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43

Does that sound awful to you? I hear the little voice in your head: Destruction of evidence! Obstruction of justice! You are naive. You imagine the courts are reliable, that wrong results are rare, and therefore I ought to have trusted the system. If he truly believed Jacob was innocent, you are thinking, he would have simply let the police sweep in and take whatever they liked. Here is the dirty little secret: the error rate in criminal verdicts is much higher than anyone imagines. Not just false negatives, the guilty criminals who get off scot-free—those “errors” we recognize and accept. They are the predictable result of stacking the deck in defendants’ favor as we do. The real surprise is the frequency of false positives, the innocent men found guilty. That error rate we do not acknowledge—do not even think about—because it calls so much into question. The fact is, what we call proof is as fallible as the witnesses who produce it, human beings all. Memories fail, eyewitness identifications are notoriously unreliable, even the best-intentioned cops are subject to failures of judgment and recall. The human element in any system is always prone to error. Why should the courts be any different? They are not. Our blind trust in the system is the product of ignorance and magical thinking, and there was no way in hell I was going to trust my son’s fate to it. Not because I believed he was guilty, I assure you, but precisely because he was innocent. I was doing what little I could to ensure the right result, the just result. If you do not believe me, go spend a few hours in the nearest criminal court, then ask yourself if you really believe it is error-free. Ask yourself if you would trust your child to it.

1) The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk. 2)    At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage. 3) He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence. 4) He is verbally abusive. 5)    He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide. 6)    He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.). 7) He has battered in prior relationships. 8)    He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty). 9)    He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”). 10)   His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery). 11)   There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things). 12)   He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner. 13)   He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time. 14) He refuses to accept rejection. 15)   He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.” 16)   He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them. 17) He minimizes incidents of abuse. 18)   He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc. 19)   He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship.

Ken Wharfe Before Diana disappeared from sight, I called her on the radio. Her voice was bright and lively, and I knew instinctively that she was happy, and safe. I walked back to the car and drove slowly along the only road that runs adjacent to the bay, with heath land and then the sea to my left and the waters of Poole Harbour running up toward Wareham, a small market town, to my right. Within a matter of minutes, I was turning into the car park of the Bankes Arms, a fine old pub that overlooks the bay. I left the car and strolled down to the beach, where I sat on an old wall in the bright sunshine. The beach huts were locked, and there was no sign of life. To my right I could see the Old Harry Rocks--three tall pinnacles of chalk standing in the sea, all that remains, at the landward end, of a ridge that once ran due east to the Isle of Wight. Like the Princess, I, too, just wanted to carry on walking. Suddenly, my radio crackled into life: “Ken, it’s me--can you hear me?” I fumbled in the large pockets of my old jacket, grabbed the radio, and said, “Yes. How is it going?” “Ken, this is amazing, I can’t believe it,” she said, sounding truly happy. Genuinely pleased for her, I hesitated before replying, but before I could speak she called again, this time with that characteristic mischievous giggle in her voice. “You never told me about the nudist colony!” she yelled, and laughed raucously over the radio. I laughed, too--although what I actually thought was “Uh-oh!” But judging from her remarks, whatever she had seen had made her laugh. At this point, I decided to walk toward her, after a few minutes seeing her distinctive figure walking along the water’s edge toward me. Two dogs had joined her and she was throwing sticks into the sea for them to retrieve; there were no crowd barriers, no servants, no police, apart from me, and no overattentive officials. Not a single person had recognized her. For once, everything for the Princess was “normal.” During the seven years I had worked for her, this was an extraordinary moment, one I shall never forget.

Rape has been described by victim advocate and former police officer Tom Tremblay as “the most violent crime a person can survive.”10 Those who have not been sexually assaulted can perhaps most clearly understand the experience of a survivor by thinking of them as having survived an attempted murder that used sex as the weapon. Sexual violence often doesn’t look like what we think of as “violence”—only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn’t even “aggression” as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person’s choice about what will happen next. Survivors don’t “fight” because the threat is too immediate and inescapable; their bodies choose “freeze” because it’s the stress response that maximizes the chances of staying alive . . . or of dying without pain. Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse, like a relationship where sex is unwanted, though it may be technically “consensual” because the targeted person says yes in order to avoid being hurt or feels trapped in the relationship or is otherwise coerced. In that context, a survivor’s body gradually learns that it can’t escape and it can’t fight; freeze becomes the default stress response because of the learned pattern of shutdown as the best way to guarantee survival. Each person’s experience of survival is unique, but it often includes a kind of disengaged unreality. And afterward, that illusion of unreality gradually degrades, disintegrating under the weight of physical existence and burdened memory. The tentative recognition that this thing has actually happened incrementally unlocks the panic and rage that couldn’t find their way to the surface before, buried as they were under the overmastering mandate to survive. But survival is not recovery; survival happens automatically, sometimes even against the survivor’s will. Recovery requires an environment of relative security and the ability to separate the physiology of freeze from the experience of fear, so that the panic and the rage can discharge, completing their cycles at last.

refuge imagine how it feels to be chased out of home. to have your grip ripped. loosened from your fingertips, something you so dearly held on to. like a lover’s hand that slips when pulled away you are always reaching. my father would speak of home. reaching. speaking of familiar faces. girl next door who would eventually grow up to be my mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a single flickering lamp where beyond was only darkness. there they would sit and tell stories of monsters that lurked and came only at night to catch the children who sat and listened to stories of monsters that lurked. this is how they lived. each memory buried. an artefact left to be discovered by archaeologists. the last words on a dying family member’s lips. this was sacred. not even monsters could taint it. but there were monsters that came during the day. monsters that tore families apart with their giant hands. and fingers that slept on triggers. the sound of gunshots ripping through the sky became familiar like the tapping of rain fall on a window sill. monsters that would kill and hide behind speeches, suits and ties. monsters that would chase families away forcing them to leave everything behind. i remember when we first stepped off the plane. everything was foreign. unfamiliar. uninviting. even the air in my lungs left me short of breath. we came here to find refuge. they called us refugees so, we hid ourselves in their language until we sounded just like them. changed the way we dressed to look just like them. made this our home until we lived just like them and began to speak of familiar faces. girl next door who would grow up to be a mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a flickering lamp to keep away the darkness. there we would sit and watch police that lurked and came only at night to arrest the youths who sat and watched police that lurked and came only at night. this is how we lived. i remember one day i heard them say to me they come here to take our jobs they need to go back to where they came from not knowing that i was one of the ones who came. i told them that a refugee is simply someone who is trying to make a home. so next time when you go home tuck your children in and kiss your families goodnight, be glad that the monsters never came for you. in their suits and ties. never came for you. in the newspapers with the media lies. never came for you. that you are not despised. and know that deep inside the hearts of each and every one of us we are all always reaching for a place that we can call home.

I can’t remember a specific time when the comments and the name-calling started, but one evening in November it all got much worse,’ she said. ‘My brother Tobias and me were doing our homework at the dining room table like we always did.’ ‘You’ve got a brother?’ She hesitated before nodding. ‘Papa was working late at the clinic in a friend’s back room – it was against the law for Jews to work as doctors. Mama was making supper in the kitchen, and I remember her cursing because she’d just burned her hand on the griddle. Tobias and me couldn’t stop laughing because Mama never swore.’ The memory of it made her mouth twitch in an almost-smile. Then someone banged on our front door. It was late – too late for social calling. Mama told us not to answer it. Everyone knew someone who’d had a knock on the door like that.’ ‘Who was it?’ ‘The police, usually. Sometimes Hitler’s soldiers. It was never for a good reason, and it never ended happily. We all dreaded it happening to us. So, Mama turned the lights out and put her hand over the dog’s nose.’ Esther, glancing sideways at me, explained: ‘We had a sausage dog called Gerta who barked at everything. ‘The knocking went on and they started shouting through the letter box, saying they’d burn the house down if we didn’t answer the door. Mama told us to hide under the table and went to speak to them. They wanted Papa. They said he’d been treating non-Jewish patients at the clinic and it had to stop. Mama told them he wasn’t here but they didn’t believe her and came in anyway. There were four of them in Nazi uniform, stomping through our house in their filthy great boots. Finding us hiding under the table, they decided to take Tobias as a substitute for Papa. ‘When your husband hands himself in, we’ll release the boy,’ was what they said. ‘It was cold outside – a freezing Austrian winter’s night – but they wouldn’t let Tobias fetch his coat. As soon as they laid hands on him, Mama started screaming. She let go of Gerta and grabbed Tobias – we both did – pulling on his arms, yelling that they couldn’t take him, that he’d done nothing wrong. Gerta was barking. I saw one of the men swing his boot at ther. She went flying across the room, hitting the mantelpiece. It was awful. She didn’t bark after that.’ It took a moment for the horror of what she was saying to sink in. ‘Don’t tell me any more if you don’t want to,’ I said gently. She stared straight ahead like she hadn’t heard me. ‘They took my brother anyway. He was ten years old. ‘We ran into the street after them, and it was chaos – like the end of the world or something. The whole town was fully of Nazi uniforms. There were broken windows, burning houses, people sobbing in the gutter. The synagogue at the end of our street was on fire. I was terrified. So terrified I couldn’t move. But Mum kept running. Shouting and yelling and running after my brother. I didn’t see what happened but I heard the gunshot.’ She stopped. Rubbed her face in her hands. ‘Afterwards they gave it a very pretty name: Kristallnacht – meaning “the night of broken glass”. But it was the night I lost my mother and my brother. I was sent away soon after as part of the Kindertransport, though Papa never got used to losing us all at once. Nor did I. That’s why he came to find me. He always promised he’d try.’ Anything I might’ve said stayed stuck in my throat. There weren’t words for it, not really. So I put my arm through Esther’s and we sat, gazing out to sea, two old enemies who were, at last, friends. She was right – it was her story to tell. And I could think of plenty who might benefit from hearing it.

Many judges, jurors, and police officers prefer certainties to science. Law professor D. Michael Risinger and attorney Jeffrey L. Loop have lamented “the general failure of the law to reflect virtually any of the insights of modern research on the characteristics of human perception, cognition, memory, inference or decision under uncertainty, either in the structure of the rules of evidence themselves, or the ways in which judges are trained or instructed to administer them.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Circle by Dave Eggers Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Severance by Ling Ma The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 1984 by George Orwell

As Monnica T. Williams, a psychologist and associate professor at the University of Connecticut, wrote in Psychology Today in 201521: We are surrounded by constant reminders that race-related danger can occur at any time, anywhere, to anyone. We might see clips on the nightly news featuring unarmed African Americans being killed on the street, in a holding cell, or even in a church. Learning of these events brings up an array of painful racially-charged memories, and what has been termed “vicarious traumatization.” Even if the specific tragic news item has never happened to us directly, we may have had parents or aunts who have had similar experiences, or we know people in our community who have, and their stories have been passed down. Over the centuries the Black community has developed a cultural knowledge of these sorts of horrific events, which then primes us for traumatization when we hear about yet another act of violence. Another unarmed Black man has been shot by police in our communities and nowhere feels safe.