Imaginary Ethnography of Hometown: An Experimental Journey into a Memory

by Mary C. Schmitt, University of California, Irvine, Visual Studies

A white square.  Empty.

A white, empty square, centrally squared; national, central square.

Squarely normative, white, empty....my hometown.

Within an empty white square: isolated, suffocated, enclosed…Empty, uneasy, greedy, hungry.

(Hungry for life...for lives?)

Hunger?

(See where the memory goes, where it will lead, what will emerge…merge, merging with me; let the memory live itself.)

Swallowing Others.

(A somatic memory? A sensual memory? A muscle memory?)

Theory, Concept, Abstract:

Taking everybody into me; wanting to be everybody, anybody; swallowing others…hungry, empty.  Fill me up with pieces of you.  I am becoming myself, swallowing pieces of you, I take you into me, I become you; I am alien to myself because now I am you.

Where am I? Alien, empty, hungry.

Am I you?  Am I your lips, your legs, your gestures?

There is no invitation to join me, to join together; I swallow you and you will never know; I take you without permission, without invitation.

A ritual of Becoming?  A Cannibal?

(Salvaging my memory, a psychological resurrection, a psychic re-imaging of myself…wow am I still thinking about me?)

(“Writing as an ethnographer from memory: the frailty of excavating the memory”-Gabriele Schwab)

(How to work with a fleeting glimpse of the memory.  I look back, trying to remember or trying not to forget.  How long did this last; seems like it lasted for years.)

A self-cannibalism; I must eat another in order to become a full human being; a primitive desire to become the Other.  “The libidinal wish to suck and incorporate was combined with the destructive aim of scooping out and emptying the object.”  “Oral-Sadism (second phase): the incorporation of the object and its characteristics, identification with it, and, at the same time, greed and destructiveness.”[1]

Innate Destructive Instincts?  Lack of self-confidence?  Overabundance of the ego?

Three stories, one brown, dim hallway: it’s third grade.  Thoughts.  Proust.

Jesse:

There I stood next to my locker, staring down the dim, brown hallway.  I’m sure it smelled like crayons and hot lunch.  She was approaching, and I was ready.  I knew what to do, had time to wait until she came closer.  Her long, elegant dancer legs, her beautiful curling eyelashes, her perfectly shaped lips and teeth, I must leave enough time to get both the head and the legs.

(I don’t understand how time and distanced was measured in this act of swallowing, but it seems to be important.)

If she was walking past me, this could be a little easier.  Wait, I’m sure I already have her legs.  I must have taken them in a long time ago. [She is about ten feet away.]  Just to be safe…I focus in on the legs…Gulp, quickly look up…breathe, squeeze the sides of my tongue.  This second swallow more difficult, my body desperately attempting to produce enough saliva.  I focus on the face…dry Gulp…phew!  I got it.  My throat contracts, expands, settles back to its resting place.  I almost missed it.  Jesse speaks to me, “Katie, do you want to come play after school…go find some more of those baby frogs for the bathtub.”  I answer, “Okay!”.  If she would have said my name one second earlier…

(What is it about naming and timing?  It seems like once she engages me by my name, interpolates “Katie” [my nickname], the unconscious desire is snuffed out.  It vanishes without recognition.)

Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, from the volume Swans Way:

"And there was another day on which she said to me: "You know, you may call me 'Gilberte'; in any case I'm gong to call you by your first name. It's too silly not to." Yet she continued for a while to address me by the more formal 'vous,' and, when I drew her attention to this, smiled, and composing, constructing a phrase like those that are put into the grammar books of foreign languages with no other object than to teach us to make use of a new word, ended it with my Christian name. And when I recalled, later, what I had felt at the time, I could distinguish the impression of having been held, for a moment, in her mouth, myself, naked, without, any longer, any of the social qualifications which belonged equally to her other companions and, when she used my surname, to my parents, accessories of which her lips - by the effort that she made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she wished to give a special value - had the air of stripping, of divesting me, as one peels the skin from a fruit which one is going to put only the pulp into one's mouth, while her glance, adapting itself to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more directly, not without testifying to the consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude that it felt, accompanying itself with a smile." (390, Volume 1).

(Proust recalls an event from childhood where he felt, in a way, swallowed; yet, when swallowed, he was naked.  The social and historical layers that projected outward on the world were peeled away from his person, and he was stripped of what, externally, made him what he was.  The nudity he felt as he entered her mouth was described as a kind of juicy, raw essence, which brought him pleasure, even gratitude.  I wonder if Jesse ever felt any unconscious pleasure in me swallowing her.  Also, in the process of proper naming that is stripped away in Proust, I can see something similar happening in the timing and distance necessary in swallowing Jesse.  Once language and thought enters, and the exchange is no longer purely instinctual, the pleasure of taking one into oneself is much more difficult, if not impossible.  Reminder: I am giving language to a memory that was itself a more unconscious activity.)

Chris:

He came out of his classroom; I stood far enough away so that he would not notice me.  God I was so in love with him.  I adored him like reese’s pieces and popcorn at the movies.  Even the thought of him made me anxious, yet stirred an insatiable longing.

He walks across the hallway…Gulp…Gulp.  I swallow him twice before he ever makes it over to the water fountain.  He dips his mouth under the stream of water.

I’ve got to get over there before anyone else; otherwise, it’s gone.  I’ll lose it.  How many more chances will I have like this one?  But he can’t see me run over there.

As soon as he turns back towards his classroom, I look around to see if anyone will block my way.  I quickly dash over to the fountain.  Now I have it all to myself.  I can take it in slowly.  It’s all mine and no one else’s.  I bend down, all the excitement and pleasure running through my body.  I turn the water on and suck in the stream; I take him into me.

(This was the most physical experience I can remember in relation to me swallowing others.  Perhaps that is why it is still so vivid.  It almost feels something akin to a muscle memory.  I remember thinking Chris and I had basically kissed at that moment.)

Melanie Magrel:

I want Melanie’s dimples and Dana’s hair.  They walk in a single file line towards the hallway’s back exit; it’s recess time.  We are still waiting in the doorway of our classroom.   I see Melanie and Dana approaching, Melanie in front of Dana (Magrel before Mastandrea). 

(Why is it that I need the proper names to retrieve and articulate the memory?  Is this the result of adulthood and language?  Am I so submerged in proper naming and language that it is impossible to think without it?)

I have to wait just a few seconds longer until they are close enough.  Melanie is smiling, as she always did, her dimples deeply impressed into her chubby cheeks…Gulp…breathe, tighten my teeth, hurry Dana is right behind her (my swallow reflex giving me a hard time due to the anxiety of missing her, knowing this would not be an easy task)…Gulp… Oh no!  Dana has already passed, I was too late, I swallowed Allissa Perry…not Allissa!  She is so big.  She is the strongest kid in third grade, and she has big boobs already!  I cannot afford to get any bigger myself; I’m already so muscular from gymnastics.  I am worried, threatened, anxious.  I need to immediately find smaller arms, smaller legs, smaller breasts!...Gulp…Christy Negeri’s legs, not the best but better than Allissa’s.  I’m distressed.  I just know now that I will really need to concentrate on finding the skinniest, little bodies to counter the large, muscular body that is now in me! 

Here comes the next line of children, Mrs. Cup’s class, Jegima Brown leads the pack.  She is even bigger than Allissa.  She’s even as tall as the teachers!  And, she is black; the only black kid in the entire school.  Good thing I did not accidentally swallow her.  I wouldn’t know how to resolve that one.

White empty square; centrally, normatively squared

National, central square

Normative, white, empty…my hometown.

---

[1] Rabin, Jean-Francois. International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis.  Enotes.com Dec 2 (2011) www.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/oral-sadistic-stage

Octopus Journal welcomes creative submissions of any variety including essays, artwork, photography, and short films.  Please contact us if you have a piece you would like to share.