m e m o i r - $ 8. 0 0
memory holes
Erin Virgil’s is an awakening. Her collage of stories exposes the narrator’s reality — a broken [w]hole revealing pictures of a shattered memory. Descend into these holes with Erin, and see humanity developing out of the darkness.
Erin Virgil is a poet and essayist, presently living in northern Colorado. She has an MFA from Naropa University and her poems have been published by Fast Forward Press, Indigo Ink, Wolverine Farm, Colorado Life Magazine, and the Buddhist Poetry Review. She keeps a literary sort of blog at: emvlovely.wordpress.com.
ISBN-10 098860778-6 ISBN-13 9780988607781 50800
9
780988 607781
m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m
memory holes erin virgil
memory holes erin virgil
monkey puzzle press harrison, arkansas
copyright Š 2014 erin virgil
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.
cover & interior design Nate Jordon
cover photo Joan Virgil
ISBN-10: 0-9886077-8-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-8-1
Monkey Puzzle Press 424 N. Spring St. Harrison, Arkansas 72601 monkeypuzzlepress.com
table of contents
withdrawal handbook
1
want ads
11
hobo tally
23
“Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless.” — Joseph Campbell —
reader’s note All three pieces are loose collections of memories. Part one is my memoir, part two offers other people’s memoirs. The third part is about living in an RV, my most recent memories.
memory holes
withdrawal handbook 1 Before, chemicals wrote on your bones. Wrote a long memoir. But there are blank lines left, on your ribs, hammers in your ears. Proceed, mark them up. It can take up to two months to get through “SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome,” which means, “total gray matter realignment.” Some people get violent as their brains crash and swell; you are more like a lobotomy patient. Your mind is reforming like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly: back to liquid, consciousness threading in and out. What crawls out after is an entirely different animal. Three in the morning: Wake up not knowing where you are, every night for a week. The comic book version and the real script may switch places. Just a side effect of withdrawal. Memories tamped down for ages come back. Memory holes drilled a long time ago are re-opened. Drop a fishing line down one when you’re feeling brave, pull it up very slowly. After a few weeks the spinning will stop. Spatial acuity reforms, gracelessly. Vision becomes reliable again, you can safely drive a car now. If you are withdrawing from SSRIs in a cold climate, wrap up your kidneys. They are decision makers, and they don’t like being cold. Would it help to remember the side effects? Cymbalta, one of the newer laboratory crapshoots, causes anxiety, suicidal thoughts, bad 1. Withdrawing from Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), that’s what I did; it took two months to feel steady. People have been messing with serotonin for a long time, with mixed results.
1
erin virgil digestion, violence in elderly people, stuck chi, lost libido, glass eye, weight gain, and dry mouth. (90 milligrams a day for ten years, that’s what you took.) Activity: Purge your medicine cabinet of all bad drugs! Expired aspirin, cheap cough syrup, liquid morphine (where’d that come from?) broken old ibuprofen. Then buy unleaded red lipstick, you’ve earned it. Health insurance? Acupuncture? Other drugs? Only the last category is involved, this is all you can afford. Caffeine, tobacco, cannabis, ibuprofen: These cured the worst of the blinding headaches. Alcohol: not recommended. You looked up the word “drug” and found its origin: Middle English via Old French drogue, possibly from Middle Dutch droge vate, literally, “dry vats,” referring to the contents therein. Did you take: • • • • • • • •
Xanax Valium Prozac Cymbalta Wellbutrin Effexor Paxil Celexa
and were you still sad in your heart?
2
memory holes You aren’t paying Merck anymore, good work. Not Pzifer, Novartis,or even Johnson and Johnson. Goodbye poison droge vate. Memory comes back in a thrush basket which has one handle only and leaks. Hold it gently. People may say you look more sincere off the meds. They are probably right.
3
other books from
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in here is a fearless exploration into the essential ventricles of memoir. Through concise language, clear and researched narration, and through a nautilus of technical lenses, The Synthesis exposes the authentic self. Memoir / 68 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-4-3
Aurora
by Mittie Babette Roger Through balancing sound, imagery, and complex narrative, Aurora is a feast for the senses, and a must-read if you have ever loved, or ever dream to. Fiction / 44 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-5-0
The Boy in the Well by Nicholas B. Morris
Within these pages you’ll find Gravediggers and Mirrors. Life may not exist without horror, and the short story may not exist without Nicholas B. Morris. Fiction / 48 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-6-7
m e m o i r - $ 8. 0 0
memory holes
Erin Virgil’s is an awakening. Her collage of stories exposes the narrator’s reality — a broken [w]hole revealing pictures of a shattered memory. Descend into these holes with Erin, and see humanity developing out of the darkness.
Erin Virgil is a poet and essayist, presently living in northern Colorado. She has an MFA from Naropa University and her poems have been published by Fast Forward Press, Indigo Ink, Wolverine Farm, Colorado Life Magazine, and the Buddhist Poetry Review. She keeps a literary sort of blog at: emvlovely.wordpress.com.
ISBN-10 098860778-6 ISBN-13 9780988607781 50800
9
780988 607781
m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m
memory holes erin virgil