Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Finally got to it, & it is very useful (or could be).

I rather prefer the myth of Judith and Holofernes and the tale of Hannah
Dunston. If the captivity narratives of other women were dumbed down to
make them charm school textbooks ("Whilst being raped, think about your
new hat"), that just reinforces that editing can also be a sin. How
women turned into shrinking violets who had to be protected by a big
strong man absolutely defeats me.

The greatest flip I've ever seen in a movie was from a source you would
never expect, John Ford's *The Searchers* with Ford's usual stock
company, including the love-him-or-hate-him iconic John Wayne. Wayne
throughout most of the film was what he always was: a Hell's Angel with
a horse, not a bike, and with the sensitivities of the same horse's
posterior. Except. He spends five years hunting down his niece Debbie
(Natalie Wood), the only survivor of an Indian raid that killed her
entire family. The raid alone--because you don't see it but only
anticipate what is coming--is terrifying, and of course George Lucas
stole the aftermath--the burning smokehouse--for the first *Star Wars*,
big news. Wayne's purpose is to kill his niece because she's been
sullied by becoming the captive "wife" of an Indian known as "Cicatrice"
or Scar. Yet when he finally gets into the Indian encampment, instead
of shooting his niece he impulsively sweeps her up in his arms and says
"Debbie, let's go home." It is the only moment I know of in the long
John Ford/Wayne collaboration that can cause you to weep. The tough guy
is human. He has not forgotten his brother (whose family was murdered
in the raid) but Debbie is part of his blood even if she has had to
survive by becoming a Comanche wife, with all they couldn't imply in
1956. So he ends the film poised between two realities: his brother's
daughter has slept with his enemy, a member of a race he views as
subhuman; yet she remains his niece.

In a sense Ethan (the Wayne character) avoids the fugue state. I don't
know how. Maybe hatred burns in him so strongly that it can harbor love
as well, and remember everything. I don't know.

Looking back at the 9/11 events I cannot recall forgetting anything I
witnessed or experienced from my vantage point 1/2 mile north, and that
was plenty. To this day I can reconstruct it. I won't, except I find
9/11 still depressing, especially last years' since it came two days
after I had a beloved cat euthanized. Back in 2001 I experienced a
phenomenon I cannot begin to fathom, unless it was a form of PTSD. So I
ask first: how many Indian captives, how many Indian survivors of raids,
suffered from PTSD and how did it help form the mutual hatred? How did
it form this nation? I am aware that it was a legacy of soldiers in all
our wars, not just Vietnam. How in the world did post-Civil War
returnees to civilian life manage not to wind up in madhouses after what
too many of them had witnessed? How did men in the UK, France, and the
US experience trench warfare in WW1, or the harshness of combat in WW2?
How did my ex-wife's uncle first survive the Battle of the Bulge from
inside a tree trunk, only to be called to interpret Yiddish when he was
ordered to enter Bergen-Belsen and talk to the survivors? I knew Max as
a blithering idiot. What he saw, smelled, heard, and touched that day
may have sent him into a lifelong state of unawareness. Who's to say?

I stayed at my job in lower Manhattan for well over two months, until
November 30, 2001. I had functioned for 2+ months in what might have
been a fog except I remember my fog state and have not suppressed it. I
had one nightmare. I did indeed "see things" in my memory. I
transitioned to unemployment on that Friday, but on the following
Wednesday had to go to New York again to see my therapist. I took the
train into Manhattan, and at Pennsylvania Station got on the uptown West
Side local. The minute the doors of the train shut I suddenly had a
sharp pain in my upper chest that radiated down my left arm. I "knew"
this was a heart attack. All I could do--forgive me, local
atheists--was pray. "Please God, not here, if I have to die, not here
where I'll be jackrolled in Times Square. Let me get home and die
there." Made no sense at all. The pain faded--but not the fear of the
pain--and I made it over to the East Side. The pain started again. I
went into a fancy men's shaving emporium for some blades. It started
again. Suddenly I got the idea. This is a panic attack, duh. I'm
scared to the other side of fear. New York City place scares the hell
out of me. I went into a fancy burger restaurant and ate a mammoth
cheddar cheeseburger with steak fries and a Coke, then smoked 2
Gauloises. My thought was "If I'm going out, I'm going on my terms, and
eff You." I got to the shrink, who said that since 9/11 he'd had a
parade of patients--old and new--come in with what he called
self-annihilation fantasies: not to kill themselves, just to not Be, to
disappear.

Walking around New York was like walking the Gettysburg battlefield but
downtown the corpses kept exploding out of the ground.

So a week later I made myself go to as to as I could get to Ground
Zero. I had another panic attack. For the succeeding two weeks I went
back to lower Manhattan and faced it. The panic faded, albeit not
entirely. I still do not like lower Manhattan, I cannot forget what I
saw and did that day, but the memories are--I hope--integrated into a
personality that probably is no more nor less warped now than it was on
9/10.

Fugue. Better Bach.

Ken

--------------------
Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow...

Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"