“Memory, in short, is engraved not merely by the life we have led but by the life of the mind…by all the lives we so nearly led but missed by an inch, and—if we grant enough leeway to the imagination—by the lives of others, which can cut into ours every bit as sharply as our own experience.” – Anthony Lane, writing about W.G. Sebald in The New Yorker (May 29, 2000)
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Tag Archives: suicide
This Day (Origami Boxes)
The day feels slow and languid and long and loud and like it is rushing by. The pressing weight of grief. Precise and heavy and yet simultaneously diffuse, and everywhere. And, outside, the sun shines. And on the radio: old … Continue reading
Remembering, 20 years gone
Lawrence O. Frye September 11, 1934 – July 4, 1994 from my father’s poem, “Raindrops” All this performed inland, in the heartland, … Continue reading
Posted in EXIT WOUND: Suicide is Not a Love Story, Grief & grieving, Memory, Suicide
Tagged grief, jahrzeit, memoir, memory, poetry, suicide
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Don’t go get a gun—anger, hope, and compassion are more powerful
To the grieving families of Aurora, Colorado: What happened in that movie theater a week ago, the anguish of losing loved ones in such a swift and horrible way, watching the injured suffer and survivors grieve, is wrenching. Like so … Continue reading
Tarzan—in the jungle we call home
So, I’ve had a post half-ready to go for more than two weeks now. I don’t suffer from writer’s block; can’t even say I have its cousin, blog block. (I’ve written several posts in my head, in addition to the … Continue reading
Posted in Grief & grieving, Memory, Suicide
Tagged addiction, coffee, depression, drug abuse, grief, memory, New York City, prejudice, psychology, suicide
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Of secrets, silence, and despair—veteran suicides, Russian teens, the power of the novel
I’ve had my head in the sand as much as possible this month, a rather nice (and terribly necessary) place to be as a writer. But emerging for air—or simply to attend to surrounding noise—tends to create something akin to … Continue reading
Adrienne Rich—what death leaves us missing
There are people we presume will always be there. This is something we seldom examine or think about; it just is. This morning when I picked up the paper and found those book-ended dates by Adrienne Rich’s name (1929-2012), my … Continue reading
Posted in Grief & grieving, Memory, Motherhood, Suicide, Writing & Reading
Tagged Adrienne Rich, Biting the Moon, Diving into the Wreck, divorce, feminism, motherhood, poetry, secrets, silence, suicide
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Witness—the Holocaust, suicide, and memory (coincidence redux)
A few weeks ago, someone recommended the book Spectral Evidence to me, which, among other things, includes World War II photos from the Łódź Ghetto, the Nazis’ Jewish quarter in this major Polish city. I wrote the book title down … Continue reading
The memory keepers: Remembering September 11th—and World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10th
My thoughts this weekend, along with much of America and many around the world, are on 9/11, remembering, mourning, thinking about what happened ten years ago and what has happened since. Two wars, much grieving, many shifts, small and large, … Continue reading
Posted in Memory, Motherhood, Suicide, War, Writing & Reading
Tagged 9/11, Aaron Fein, children, depression, Edwidge Danticat, grief, literature, suicide, White Flags, World Suicide Prevention Day
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Addendum: War, suicide, aggression—hope (a gay politician, a veteran, and a president)
When I finally saw the film Milk earlier this summer, afterwards my thoughts kept returning to the stress placed on hope in the story, seemingly in a starkly different context from that of Iraq war veteran Brad Eifert (see my … Continue reading
My Father’s Guns (part 4) – Final Installment
©2007, originally published in Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Vol. 6, “My Father’s Guns,” by Kara Frye My Father’s Guns IV. Travel back. The early eighties: I might have been ten or eleven, and Dad had recently been … Continue reading