Notes on a Silencing

by Lacy Crawford

In the churn of my thoughts I had the sense of both ascending and descending, as in the cartoon of two escalators crossing and the principals, heading in opposite directions, meeting in the middle. That July, that August, I was both rising to an adult comprehension of the fallibility of appearances and sinking toward an awareness of the ugly contortions of discretion. Maturity: people lie, or at least deny, and you must too. Maturity: this means you can do things you are not supposed to do.

In bearing witness, we’re trying to correct a theft of power via a story. But power and stories, while deeply interconnected, are not the same things. One is rock, the other is water. Over time, long periods of time, water always wins. What I want to know, even now, is: how?