Once when I was volunteering as a teacher aide in a grammar school, I became aware of one of the kids who was being tormented and bullied by all the students. They would gather around his desk taunting and shouting at him….while he cowered under his desk. About a month into the volunteering I was helping to grade some papers. This boy had written “I plan to kill myself” to the teacher’s assignment question of “What are your plans for the future ……” I learned that we all need to be more “tuned in.”
A month later a teen committed suicide, and his friends told us that he had been hinting of this. They felt badly now because they had not known what to do with his comment. They said they had not wanted to betray him……
On a side note, your casual mention of Robert Bly sent me down a spiraling flashback to an 8 am poetry college course I had to take for my English degree, where I was unwillingly subjected to one of his poetry anthologies for a good chunk of the semester.
This floored me. The symmetry of affirmation and annihilation — morning declarations of worth, evening invitations to despair — feels strangely complete. Like someone tried to build a bridge with mantras, only to find the other shore had collapsed. There’s something about the rawness of “I choose my choices” up front and “show me hell” in the back that reads less like a contradiction and more like a whole person, in two acts.
Thank you for preserving this little haunting — and for letting it sit without a forced resolution. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a long time.
I think every one of those statements, front and back, could be a line in the show Severance. I am fascinated by the mind of the person who wrote them all!
WOW!
Once when I was volunteering as a teacher aide in a grammar school, I became aware of one of the kids who was being tormented and bullied by all the students. They would gather around his desk taunting and shouting at him….while he cowered under his desk. About a month into the volunteering I was helping to grade some papers. This boy had written “I plan to kill myself” to the teacher’s assignment question of “What are your plans for the future ……” I learned that we all need to be more “tuned in.”
A month later a teen committed suicide, and his friends told us that he had been hinting of this. They felt badly now because they had not known what to do with his comment. They said they had not wanted to betray him……
This screams Bay Area to me
What a great find in a used book!
On a side note, your casual mention of Robert Bly sent me down a spiraling flashback to an 8 am poetry college course I had to take for my English degree, where I was unwillingly subjected to one of his poetry anthologies for a good chunk of the semester.
Thank you immensely for sharing this.
It’s hard to think of a person who is free from devastating nightmares writing “peaceful sleep awaits me,” as the crucial last word.
The back inscription reminds me of Rosa Parks’ timeless words, “You may do that,” this time directed to an interior uncontrollable oppressor.
“Bring it, twisted unconscious. Let’s see your worst.”
Oh man that’s badass.
This floored me. The symmetry of affirmation and annihilation — morning declarations of worth, evening invitations to despair — feels strangely complete. Like someone tried to build a bridge with mantras, only to find the other shore had collapsed. There’s something about the rawness of “I choose my choices” up front and “show me hell” in the back that reads less like a contradiction and more like a whole person, in two acts.
Thank you for preserving this little haunting — and for letting it sit without a forced resolution. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a long time.
I think every one of those statements, front and back, could be a line in the show Severance. I am fascinated by the mind of the person who wrote them all!