Privileges of Selection

I wanted to read this a third time. 

The poetry. The peeling away of time like onions, perhaps more like the putting together of the onion. 

The rendition of how we see memoir, of how much linear/chronological time we must spend explaining our childhood. 

How a lot can be said through structure: the time and place to announce experience, when to be vague, when to be specific, when to allude, when to tell it all, quickly or slowly or silently. The staggering selections chosen to create a real sense of memory, somehow not being chronological creates a more realistic approach to time and memory and self. These are truer ways to tell the story of child sexual abuse, of self-destruction and addiction, of failure attempts at love, at the crumbling experiences that become curling memories. It makes sense to tell the stories of pain and trauma this way, this feels natural and fully developed. 

A lot of people believe they must relive every detail of their past, write about it with such detail to make sure people understand what was experienced, to make sure they show what really happened. The Chronology of Water really shows how powerful it is to show the ways in which we live, the ways we experienced, rather than telling/showing the experience in and of itself over large time periods. I found this the most moving part of the whole book, especially the first five chapters that cover life until eighteen. I was astonished. I was in love. I wanted more and yet it was just enough. 

She was able to span so much time so quickly that I a part of me was baffled about the direction of her memoir. I was eager to know the narrative selections of this life of hers that she would be making after she got that suitcase together to leave for Texas. When continuing past “Suitcase,” the magic unfolded in the ways in which she was able to go back into stories of her childhood. 

Childhood stories did not end with the section called “On Sound and Speech” or “The Best Friend” but resurfaced, again like this peeling and building of the onion, in many of the following chapters. I truly loved ready the section explaining how this story is not about her sister, but if it was. Also of the layers of who her father was before he was the thing that she knew. Again, these chapters spoke to these characters and yet opened up the narrative to the stories of childhood.  

The selection of scenes, the chronology of her life, shines more and more in sections like “Love Grenade I” and II where it reminds us, again, of direction. A direction where? Who the hell knows, but we are going forward again and that is all that matters.

This is the story addicts tell. Alcoholics. How stories are revealed. You get that short version. That quick, that untouched, forced-unthought, and painful story where everyone in the room knows what is happening, what is being said, what must have happened to the person to cause the first drink, the first need. I think of the section called "Sun" where she has a the alive boy. Wow. The dead alive, fishgirl, rosy and pink not alive baby. She peeled away at her mother before Miles add more layers to her.