Aldrin Valdez

An old timer with a locked razor, he says. He quickens to hurry tears. I close my mouth to him. I do not look at my reflection.

The woman by the window, framed by plants, falsifies information. She is not from Juilliard. Her name is Martha, but she only pretends to play the piano. I corroborate her story and her singing with a fixed ear. Her history confuses my visitor who is blinded by the naked walrus startling herself on the couch by the television.

I am groggy.

The Valentine's Day chocolate will add weight, but so will the stories.

Years later, an engineer with a gymnast's build glares at me. He's drunk and late. He glares at my friends too as they sit on high stools. The strangest Valentine's date. He stands at the edge of the table and sways. He tells stories about not being himself. I do not know him at all and I will not see him again.

My nerves spider into laughter. The two women beside me join in. The two brothers across from us have stopped arguing. Both are bearded. I think they are the calmest people even if I’ve just witnessed them fighting. Or the slyest, the most held back. Reserved.

Their story sounds funny and I will remember it a few months later at their house while I study pictures from their childhood. I am groggy on the car ride to their town. I keep dozing away. The dog in the cellar at his house diffuses my sleepiness for a few minutes.

We pass a rundown facility, acres and acres of open field, trees, and underbrush. My bearded friend tells me what used to be there.

He shaves. I recognize him, of course, but he does not seem like himself. Do you hurry tears? I cut them with laughter, he says. What are you holding back? A song. How come? Because I will give myself away if I sing it.

I confound him with my singing. I am off key right now, but I meet him with a falsetto. He laughs. On the phone, I confide my half-torn mouth. I suddenly feel naked and apologize. I will not see him again.

You're not as well as you'd like to pretend, he says. The man in the window responds with a glare. It is either the walrus behind him or the torn mouth that makes him uneasy. He sits down, sinks in to a nook and says he is groggy.

I've been fascinated with the idea of ghosts--memory as a sort of haunting; how traumatic experiences manifest themselves--or in Freudian terms, how a suppressed memory lingers as a lasting impression on one's psyche; in narrative as a way to apprehend loss.

I read an article about fugue by Jessica Lieberman a few years ago. It appeals to me now as I focus on my work, dealing with "re-memory" and tapping into images/emotions/gestures that could not be "voiced" before or don't have a certain narrative--embodied, but having no referent. What occurs then? What happens when you try to leave/deny/silence the trauma/loss?

Here, Lieberman focuses more on the American reaction to fugue. What fascinates me more is how Brown's loss becomes something else-- a new agent (Browne) that, to paraphrase Butler, cannot remember its own history, its past.

Below is my full summary of Lieberman's article.

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Lieberman, Jessica Catherine. "Flight from Haunting: Psychogenic Fugue and Nineteenth-Century American Imagination." _Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination_. Ed. Andrew Weinstock. Wisconsin: Popular Press, 2004.

In Jessica Catherine Lieberman's "Flight from Haunting," the author focuses on a phenomenon called fugue, a condition in which patients experience a sort of amnesia during which they find themselves far from home and work, completely disoriented, unaware of their surroundings. Trauma often informs the lives of fugue patients.

During the late 19th century, modern Spiritualism sweeps America. As a hybrid movement, it joins together science and religion. Its practitioners, the spiritualists, believe that through a medium, spirits could be contacted and their ghostly forms manifested. Coupled with this quasi-scientific trend, a sense of social and economic progression spreads throughout the country. For many, these changes are precipitated by the end of the Civil War and by a desire to explore the frontier--which offers a new life, one unencumbered by the shackles of old society--of Puritan ideals and restrictions. It is in this environment that fugue is"discovered" and introduced into modern psychiatry. The first fuguer to be identified in the United States is Reverend Ansel Bourne who, one morning in 1887, finds himself in Norristown, Pennsylvania, baffled by his amnesia. His neighbors, however, recognize him as A.J. Brown, a diligent shopkeeper. Spiritualists claim that this alternate identity is a ghost manifesting itself through Bourne. However, as Lieberman posits, Bourne was not only possessed by a ghost, as the Spiritualists claims, he was also haunted by the Spirit of the Age--by a growing desire to escape the failure of individuality--the so-called Manifest Destiny. This disillusionment, coupled with the growing influence of cultural science, leads to the "creation" of fugue.

Bourne's memories as Brown resurface during a post-hypnotic session with a renowned psychologist, William James. The findings are then published in _The Principles of Psychology_ in which James states that the "the same brain may subserve conscious selves, either alternate or co-existing (Lieberman 142). In Bourne's situation, this alternate self is Brown.

At this time, fugue is already prevalent in France and has become a controversy throughout Europe. While the Europeans merely add fugue to their already growing list of mental illnesses, American theorists see fugue as a "plausible reaction to the self when faced with foreign invasion" (quoted in Lieberman 142). This foreign invasion , as we will see later on, is the effect of strict religion and cultural melee that ultimately bombards the self. As a result, an alternate identity and reality are formed. In addition, while the French interprets fugue in political and military terms, the American perception focuses on the cultural and social aspects of the "disease".

In America fugue becomes popular for two reasons:1. the Puritan heritage that is embedded in the minds of Protestants, and 2. the new interest in cultural phenomena. Protestants are adamant believers in ghosts and possession, so it is fitting that they assimilate fugue and its scientific meaning as religious and cultural motif.

On a broader scope, fugue enters American lexicon at a time when the nation is highly interested in the growing field of biological science, most importantly in Darwin's theories of evolution. As a psychological pathology, Bourne's miraculous experiences also have significant scientific value: according to James' conclusions, Bourne suffered from a traumatic illness, in which the self is overwhelmed by its surroundings.

This traumatic experience is common among fugue patients, who have often undergone extreme psychical and physical suffering, such as war or abuse. For Bourne, this comes in the form of loss. As a young man, Bourne had lost his sight, hearing, and speech, leaving him incapable of communication. However, he claims that during this period of great distress he experienced a miracle in which he was able to commune with spirits. The incident leads Bourne's conversion into Christianity.

But Bourne's fugue is not heeded by miracles alone, it is also fueled by a burgeoning sense of wanting to escape a life steeped in religious dogma and the pressure of individual failure. The end of the 19th century bears witness to this waning of Puritan ideals. For Bourne, the Puritan values no longer held answers to his suffering. Likewise, for many the idea of perfection becomes implausible. Thus Bourne's alternate identity attempts to move westward as many Americans do at this time. The West promises an escape from a life constrained by perfection and the strive for dogmatic idealism.Manifest Destiny, therefore, becomes the new spirit of the age, one that "possesses" those who yearn to escape the failure of individuality and seek ultimate freedom. "To 'Go West' in this new context, then, [is] to escape the limits of individualism, to contest the boundaries of singular consciousness, to conquer the divide between life and death" (152).

That 19th century scientists and Spiritualists alike argue to explain the true meaning of fugue is proof of a nation gradually changing and growing, haunted and possessed by its past and the future that comes after. For Bourne and other Americans, the future is uncertain, but it holds more than what they left behind.