Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Mira Bartok: The Memory Palace

Tonight on behalf of Harvard bookstore I am pleased to welcome Mira Bartok here to discuss the memory palace a memoir The Memory Palace is a breathtaking literary memoir about the complex meaning of love truth and the capacity for forgiveness among family. It is an intertwined dual narrative the story of a woman coping with a traumatic brain injury and a complex tale of a woman confronting her childhood memories of growing up with a mentally ill mother Mira Bartok is a Chicago born artist and writer and the author of 28 books for children. Her writing has appeared in the literary journals and anthologies and has been noted in the best American Essays. She lives in Worcester Massachusetts where she runs Mira's list a blog that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world. The Memory Palace is her first book for adults. Alison Bechtel author of the graphic memoir Fun Home describes the memory palace as in some ways a memoir about memory itself as bar talk recalls the shattering experiences of her childhood literally illuminating them with her haunting demonic paintings. Something that was never

intact is made resonantly whole again. We are very pleased to bring her to Harvard bookstore tonight. Please join me in welcoming Mira Bartok. Thank you. Hello thanks for coming in this awful weather. I think can you all hear me OK. I think I'll start by just reading the prologue to the book. It's very short and then I'm going to read my chapters are really long so I'm going to read perhaps the shortest chapter. So it should be about 25 minutes or something. This the prologue is called Homeless a homeless woman let's call her my mother for an hour yours sits on a window ledge in late afternoon. In a working class neighborhood in Cleveland

or it could be Baltimore or Detroit. She is five stories up and below the ambulances waiting red the red lights flashing in the rain. The woman thinks they're the red eyes of a leopard from her dream last night. The voices below tell her not to jump but the ones in her head are winning in her story there are leopards on every corner. Men with wild teeth and cat bodies tails as long as Rivers if she opens her arms into wings she must cross a bridge of fire. Battle for horses and riders. I am a swan on a spindle a falcon a bear. The men below call up to save her cast their nets to lure her down but she knows she cannot reach the garden without the distant journey. She opens her arms to enter the land of birds and fire. I will become wind. Bone blood and memory. And the red eyes below are amazed to see just how perilously she balances on the ledge like a leaf or a delicate lock of hair.

So I'm going to read from a chapter. I'm going to read the whole chapter called The eye of Goya. And this takes place. When I was pretty small I don't know maybe six years old or something like that my mother used to take me to the Cleveland Museum of Art and and it's it's sort of one of the early times when I began to notice that she was unlike other mothers. And it opens in the present and then it goes back in time. I'm trying to I'm trying to search in my mind at the beginning of this chapter for an image that can kind of bring me back to that period of time and I'm searching for a particular painting by Goya that I recall from the from the museum. The eye of Goya by the way my mother was in gets a frantic but she was not without humor. And she had a bit of shit quite a dark sense of humor so if you find yourself chortling in a couple places I understand you're not laughing at her you're

laughing with her. She did have a great sense of humor and her letters to me were full of these sort of strange little funny things sometimes so I feel OK to laugh if you feel like laughing. I understand the I have gone once when she was homeless my mother sent me a postcard from a should all exhibit with a letter written on the back of a Dunkin Donuts bag. DEAR DAUGHTER I am trying to adjust to life with a white cane. Many years ago there was a man in Cleveland who made a point of rap tap tapping by my way but I am a little slow in the game of Simon Says. These days I keep a journal. There is always the continuous anxiety of blanking out again and I need to be reminded of myself constantly. One can always rely on who is there but on oneself. Within your sphere of interest the painting you made for me and the 1080 is called selective forgetfulness is missing stolen or confiscated. I have some complaints going on as you can imagine. By the way when you translate the

message in the above dots you will learn nine letters of the Braille alphabet. Note to your artist the color pencils you sent are being used by yours truly. I thank you. P.s. when I have something nice to write about I'll let you know. I love mother. My mother sent me postcards from all the art exhibits she went to in Cleveland Chicago Los Angeles and New York during her extended stays at shelters and motels. She went to museums on free days right before closing so she didn't have to pay. I want to send my mother postcards from shows. But if I did she might find out where I lived or traveled to in the years we were apart. When she lived in Chicago at the same time I did in the early 90s. We even went to see the same exhibits. I'd always wear dark sunglasses and tuck my hair up in my hat just in case. Each year for her birthday on November 17 I sent her a museum date book I found most of them in her storage room a U-Haul she had made notations each day about the weather and what she ate.

She also copied the pictures with oil pastels or colored pencils and glued them on to large colored collages she called her posters of intent. My mother told me about them in her letters how she would put them up against windows and shelters and motels to block out radioactive gas and the projected thoughts of others. When my mother sent me one of her drawings or collages she added commentary on the back. Sometimes she threw away the picture and just sent the commentary a copy of the buffet for you then added a little color should have left as is. When I finished the picture I destroyed it. Afterwards I typed all the M's in the dictionary bathed and contemplated my own labyrinth and Nuff said Mom. In one letter 10 years after she had been on the story she enclosed a small drawing of goats she wrote. You asked about my eye problems. I've been legally blind but did not walk with Cain until Chicago Enclosed is a small picture for you of two mountain goats conversing in a field. Someone asked me the other day how a blind person can draw. And I

said there was a man who was deaf who composed music. His name was Ludwig. I am still not on his level but I am not dead yet mother. My mother and I loved artists and famous people who suffered from horrible afflictions like Beethoven Joan of Arc Frida Kahlo and Frank burned at the stake or crippled at birth. We wanted to read about it. I don't remember talking about our shared obsession it was just something unspoken. Perhaps she connected viscerally to their suffering. Well I tried to understand hers but Beethoven was my mother's muse for me it was the Spanish painter Francisco de Gaulle. Both men became deaf later late in life. My mother and I were equally fond of Vincent Van Gogh. When my mother had a particularly bad day she'd write in her journal another ear to chop off as sometimes she just wrote another ear. I love that. When I received my first letter from her two years after she became homeless I noticed

that my mother had written my sister's name in the corner of the envelope instead of her own. From that point on she referred to herself from time to time as Rachel which is my sister's name Rachel and hair. The Helen Keller and the Frank of Chicago deaf blind mute baby of the war. At the hotel in Cleveland while my sister lay sleeping. This is in the present the sense that I have found out that my mother is dying I haven't seen her in 17 years and I find her at the end of her life so I'm in a hotel with my sister. I search for pictures in my mind. I was trying to find a particular one by Goya from the Cleveland Museum of Art hoping it would lead me back to my mother to a time long ago. I whispered his titles like incantations the sleep of reason produces monsters. Saturn Devouring his son Tantalus murdered peasants appeared tormented souls held in

corners of asylums winged monsters emerged from clouds of bats as dark figures ride on the black walls of La Quinta that sort of the house of the Deaf Man. Where in tortured silence he conjure demons with Cannibal teeth. But none of these pictures were what I was looking for. I closed my eyes and entered the palace. Through the door past the deuce and my mother's photograph this is a palace I'm creating in my mind that I've put on my pink studio wall. By the way the passion flower glowing in its frame. I paused and turned right then entered a sunlit room filled with paintings. Straight ahead was a portrait of a man sitting at a desk. The part it was by Goya. It wasn't that remarkable for Goya that is if I had seen it in the in a museum I it might have passed it by. But when I thought of it then a memory bloomed from when I was nine. It was nine. I was

back in Cleveland in the spring of 1968 and my mother and I were boarding the east bound Rapid Transit heading to university circle and the Cleveland Museum of Art. As we pull away from the platform we pass the junk yard. I watch Big Yellow cranes lift rusty cars and another machine smash them flat then stacked them on a pile of metal. One machine looks like a monster with an evil grin. It's a dragon and a princess is held captive beneath a mountain. Perseus arrives on is when we get hoarse just in time as we travel far above the banks of the Cuyahoga. I hold my nose because the river smells like rotten eggs. A year later when I am ten it will catch on fire. I'll remember the burning river people running from shore. Although I am almost certain I wasn't there the fire will be quelled in twenty minutes and no one will be harmed. But I'll remember it like a painting by her on a mist. A hellish river in flames boiling in black naked people

drowning and crying out in terror. Remember how my mother saw signs before it even happened in the paintings we visited at the museum. It's a good day and my mother is taking a nap. She's not talking to herself or gesturing to the window as if she's making a point to someone saying well he says the CIA CIA is involved or he says another plane is going to crash. She's not channeling crazy Guggenheim or Pearl Bailey striding down the aisle shouting out random punchlines from her act or impersonating Sammy Davis Jr. or whispering to my father's old Chicago pal Saul Bellow. She's not swearing at Jesus or God. When we arrive at the station on the east side of Cleveland my mother and I make our way past condemned buildings and empty parking lots toward University Circle. Patti and Stephanie and the other kids from our neighborhood don't even come to this part of town. 1068 there are shootings here riots and gangs. Pausing for a minute would you like to sit down. Please feel free. Don't feel

pressured but please feel free. You want interrupt me. OK there it is I say. The lagoon. She smiles and reaches down to take my hand. We are almost there. I see the pond sparkling in the distance. It's a warm afternoon and spring everywhere there are swans and water birds a maze of trees and winding paths graced with irises and columbines in front of the museum is a fountain with neo classic statues and gushing water. It's warm and my mother and I take off our shoes to dip our toes. She lights up a cigarette while I've circled the fountain while balancing one foot at a time. We could be any mother and daughter out for a Sunday afternoon and exotic beauty in a bright red dress and her shy dark eyed daughter knees stained green from sodden grass before ascending the stairs we pause in front of the thinker Rodin's muscular patina nude is hunched over head in hand oblivious to the

world. My mother laugh softly says something I can't make out. Is she talking to me. She suddenly charges ahead eyes glued to the ground and tosses her lit cigarette away. Come on kiddo she says. Let's go inside. Inside the museum we stop at the old St. wishing well. I stand on tip toes to reach the top and make the same wishes I always do. Tossing three pennies and one by one please make my mother happy make me a great artist and please end the war in Vietnam. My goal is to hit bottom dead center. My mother cast her three coins at once. Her face is flat without emotion. What is it she wishes for. After the well we enter the room of Madonna's and illuminated books there are gilded paintings by Sienese and Florentine artists stigmata at St. Stern on happy angels stiff Madonnas with their baby men cry suckling from Apple round breasts. I

love the painted books most of all I touch the glass with my finger tracing the birds and flowers scrolled around the ancient text. There are books of hours painted on vellum intricate hymnal salters and to phenols brevity's besty Aires herbals and luminous Bibles for monasteries and kings. There is even one with a tiny naked man urinating on a large initial letter surrounded by puti and a pair of fornicating goats. The labels say the manuscripts are painted in egg tempera and illuminated with gold leaf. Where could they have plucked leaves of gold and paint from eggs what kind of eggs a swallow as a hummingbird's. After the Middle Ages my mother and I head straight for Picasso. We stand in front of his blue period painting of the Macy added Circus Circus performers. My mother bends down brushes the hair out of my face. You are my little Picasso she says. Some day your paintings will hang in these walls. Why is Picasso so sad I ask. He wasn't sad. He painted said

people. When we come to the surrealists we see a world upside down. A man with no hands in a bull's eye for a face. A painting of pink pianos and monstrous things. A field of bizarre forms dissolving into a desolate sandy beach. There is something to be said for realism says my mother. Do you remember your dreams. I draw them. Let me see. I opened my sketchbook that I take with me everywhere and show her pictures of my dreams. I tell her how I fly around the neighborhood just like the floating figures figures and paintings by Marc Chagall. I travel up the canopy of trees and West 148 street. But it's hard to get off the ground so I have to wave my arms up and down really fast to get started. I point to the picture picture of a horse and explain how I become a different animal every night. A cat a bird a swift white tailed deer. I don't mention that in my dreams. She is a predator and I am her prey. Or that sometimes she is a crocodile standing on two

feet trying to devour me whole. Instead I tell her about my other dreams the one where I am a knight who saves her. There's a house and it's filling up with water and you're drowning and you save me. And then we're in the basement and there's an evil giant and he's swinging you around by your hair and you're screaming but then you should've been a boy. Then you could be a knight where Prince. But in my dreams I have a sword. Joan of Arc had a sword. Jan of Arc was a nut. I need a cigarette she says. We all need water. We wind our way through the bowels of the museum till we come to the place I call the Spanish room. My mother leaves me when she goes out just outside to smoke. I don't move an inch and don't talk to anyone she says I'll be right back in the center of the room stands an equestrian statue an armored man sits atop a dark horse cloaked in steel alert and ready for battle surrounding the metal horse our

solemn seventeenth and eighteenth century paintings martyrs Saints prophets priests and kings. There's a greenish grey Christ on a cross by Al Greco. His face twisted in pain. I had seen this look before in Michel as he lay dying. Michel you'll need another chapter next to the old Greco there's a portrait of an ancient prophet emerging from the shadows. The ominous paintings and Dark Horse should make the room dismal but sun pours in from the skylight above and envelops the place of light in every corner there are flowers and voluminous ferns. It feels more Monet than El Greco or exuberant. A room meant to embrace Renoir. My mother's least favorite impressionist. What a faker. She says whenever we pass one of his pink cheeked blonde and busty French girls. I sit on a bench in the shadow of the horse so I don't have to look into the eyes of the portrait across the room. I'm not sure why it bothers me. It's just a man a portrait of someone named Juan Antonio

squared by Goya but I think it is going up because his name is on the label below the stern looking man who I think is going to well call him Goa wears a stiff black coat and holds a compass in his hand and architects plan to spread out before him on that on a desk. I imagine him watching me. I know he's not really watching me. But still there he is. How did the painter learn to do that. I settle in to draw a horse a writer a potted plant with red flowers and pointed white tongues. The light shifts clouds pass overhead. I've already sketched the horse and the rider the plants Christ tormented face. A case of spiked gauntlets crossbows Cranach on Quinn's a closeup of my left hand. How long have I been sitting there going as I stare at me from across the room as if to say your mothers never come. Going to come. Why don't you just go home. It's getting late and I want my mother to come back. But what

if she never does. I could wait here an hour or a year. Set up a bed in the museum. Seasons could change the weather could get cold it could snow and still she might never return. I get up and walk across the floor to go. I have to look up and strain my neck to see the man in the picture. What else is there to do but keep on drawing. I practice what I learned from the book my mother bought for me. First break the figure down in simple shapes an oval for the head a triangle for the torso. I hold my pencil and squint to judge the distance between his eyes and nose his nose and mouth. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker. The museum will be closing soon somewhere outside of my mother paces. Where is she. In the Rose Garden. It's too early for roses by the fountain. I want her to come back and take me home and I want her to leave me there and let me finish my drawing. Get the details in the gold brocaded cuffs and collar those eyes that keep

on staring when she's late there's the dreaded feeling of being found out that my mother is sick and they will capture her like the policeman did that time she cut herself up her arms right after Mitchell The sick man died. Well at the time she teetered on Grandma's balcony shaking her fist at the sky men in white coats didn't come like they do in the movies. Just two policeman with their flashlights flashing lights their guns and clubs talking to her like she was mentally retarded or a foreigner or a person who is deaf. I imagine her speaking softly to herself in the garden. Does she ever think of me when she wanders. Does she ever talk to me and her head. They will hurt her. I am always worried about that. The authorities men in uniforms. I can see a crowd gathering in my mind. I am always afraid of the crowd that gathers of the person who says Is that your mother. No I don't know her why does she look like me. Do I look like I have a mother like that.

The museum is closing in 15 minutes. A voice booms from above. I hear the tap tap of heels against hardwood but there are man's shoes. I slip into the next room. Then the next. Why am I running. Someone turns off the lights one by one. I should return to the Spanish room to go and the green man on the cross. But instead I find myself an American decorative arts lost in a sea of colonial furniture and pewter mugs. There's a black velvet rope separating me from an 18th century bed covered by a faded red canopy. I slip beneath the rope to the other side. I hear a noise so I tuck in behind a tapestry hanging on the wall. The galleries are now closed says the scratchy loud Skeets the loud speaker voice. Did I mishear her. Maybe she said I'll meet you outside. But where the front to the back. Maybe she's in the Spanish ROOM right now and is with the guard waiting. She's growling at the guard like an angry mother Wolf. I'm not going anywhere

without my child. I travel from colonial America to ancient Egypt. I find an ancient stone sarcophagus and wonder if I should climb inside to hide ancient Egypt as a dark hidden place with plenty of nooks and crannies to disappear. That is what I really want to disappear. Just sail up the Nile on a reed boat searching for mummies and buried tombs. I want to eat figs run around naked looking for dung beetles. I want to see a real Sphinx see a real live scorpion in the desert sand. I walk in circles sneak past Greek and Roman gods black and red vases animals card from St.. I find myself back in the Spanish room with Goya light seeps in from the sun skylight and cuts across as arrogant face. I can't stop looking at his eyes how is it that they fell me wherever I go. Is this what it's like to be my mother. To feel like objects can read your

mind. I get an idea a strange notion that has to do with magic. I make up magic rules all the time. If I don't step on a crack my mother will have a good day. If I cross my fingers when we board the train she won't talk to people no one can see. I come up with a new rule. If I can touch one of Goya's eyes and count to 10 my mother will return. I stand up on my tiptoes and reach for a bellowing voice behind me stops my hand in mid-air. Don't touch the art. The guard leads me all the way to the front of the museum. I tell him that that's where my mother said to wait and he believes me. He lets me out and closes the heavy door behind him. It is that easy. The sun is setting. No one is there. I turn and run down the stairs. I get a hunch that she's in the back. That's where she usually goes to smoke. I run around the museum to the other side. There is always this memory of a group of young men walking toward me in the parking

lot. They move like one solid body a single org organism a paramecium of men. I tense up like I do when the neighborhood boys approach me in the field behind my grandparents house or on the way to school when one of them makes fun of my shabby clothes and grabs my violin case and throws it in the mud. The men are getting Croque closer. I say to myself I will not cry and form my hands into tight little balls. I imagine I have claws. I am the invisible cat. When I hear a voice the sound of. Then I hear a voice. The sound of wild cruel laughter. There's a woman at the far end of the of the lot marching in my direction. The men look at her and laugh then veer off toward the street. As she gets closer I can see the woman shaking her fist. This could have happened. I run to my mother and she hugs me says I'm so sorry sweetheart.

She tells me she tried to go back to the Spanish room but they had already closed up shop. She'll never leave me again she says let's go get some food how about that cafeteria downtown. You can get a nice grilled cheese. But memory isn't possible to ensnare even if you build a palace to contain it. This could have happened too. I ran to her but she doesn't know I'm there. She's yelling at someone only she can say and he's going to be with her for a very long time at least 40 more years. He will be telling her what to do what to think when to write a letter to the police went to put a knife inside her purse went to hide a gun for when the Nazis come knocking. He will be there till the day she dies. Who are you talking to I say. No one that I heard you I say you were talking to someone who were those men. She asks what those men what did they want what

did they say to you. I didn't talk to those men who were you talking to you're imagining things it wasn't me. I heard you hoo hoo hoo. IS IT YOU WE'RE TALKING TO TELL ME. No one. My mother will always say no one. This could be the first day I pay close attention to how we get home so I can remember which streets to cross which trains to take and where to make our connections. This could be when I become a nav a navigator in a turbulent city. A master of subway systems and bus routes. When I learned to carry coins in my coat a hidden dollar in my shoe just in case. Later when I am 10 traveling by myself on the bus to the museum I will watch two men smashing all the windows of a store. Another day a witness a man getting mugged in an alleyway. Another time a crowd of people with signs marching toward a police blockade. Cleveland is burning all around us in the 60s. The world is on fire.

The river the dying lake. My mother's beautiful brain. And this could have happened something more mundane a misheard word said in passing a misremembered place. A mother loses track of time she waits on one side of a building while her daughter waits on the other. There is no group of men no woman laughing. Just two people a mother and child humming a tune to keep themselves from falling further in the dark. Thank you. Thanks part of my book is about the fell ability of memory and when you when you have a brain injury becomes more complicated. And after I went so I was able to read a bit after my accident I became very interested in neuroscience and sort of the latest research on memory and in a way it was very freeing because I realized it's it's

you know it especially when you have met especially before age 10 your memories are a bit you sometimes you think I know if any of you had this experience one of your siblings has a memory and thinks that that's my memory that now that's my. And so it. You know I remember things the best I could but sometimes I remember different endings to things and so it's memories more a lot more curial and complicated than we think it is so. Anyway that's the short answer and the long answer. I felt. I felt much more connected to my mother I think than my sister did in a way because. Well I was very musical and my mother was a pianist. She was very talented and would have her first breakdown was a music conservatory she would have gone on to you know become a.

You know a classical pianist. So we connected musically and we also connected through our band. My sister felt less connected to her. I think they loved each other very much and you know I knew my mother loved us but she my mother when my sister reached puberty my sister my mother obsessed on her much more than she obsessed and may she sort of made this switch from neglect to kind of intrusive behavior which I talk about in the book which is something very common with some forms of schizophrenia kind of flip flopping between those two kinds of being very sort of flat emotionally and neglect and neglectful of self and others and then being very obsessed and paranoid. So. But she got to be my sister to be with her mother at the end. So when my at the end of my mother's life and I I found these in

my mother's backpack. I found 17 keys this bundle of keys in a dirty sock. And I found out that one of these keys did indeed open this storage unit with all this ephemeral from our childhood as well as all kinds of other strange things like Geiger counters to measure radiation and all and 17 years of diaries some of which some of those diaries sections are in my book. I tried every single key and the last one clicked open that storage unit. I never found out what the other keys where the other keys went to however there was one key I did find out. And that was to say I mentioned at the very end of the book so. Oh well I don't actually I don't and I don't answer the seek the I didn't know the answer to this. When I finish the book but I do now. So I'll tell

you. So one of those keys turned out to be a safety deposit box and in it were two diamond rings from my grama which weren't worth that much money but they came and they were kind of gaudy and nothing that I would wear my sister would wear. And they came at a time. It came at a time when I really needed money. And and so it's like it was just perfect time I mean we found these. I asked my sister if she wanted these rings and she didn't want the rings and so and we weren't attached to them and my mother really wasn't attached to them. She wanted us to have them to do. I mean she she told me on her death bed that she had diamond rings for us. And I totally did not believe her. I mean. Yeah so that so. But I still have but I still have those keys I don't know where those keys but those keys unlock although a couple of them were to U-Haul

other U-Haul storage units but they might have been old ones. But recently I got through Facebook. This happened this past week. I got a letter from the daughter of my mother's best friend from high school who continued to take her and all those 17 years and who let her store some things in her basement. And so that one of those keys might have been to that. So we're going to meet in Cleveland and I do this reading Cleveland next month. So I say I'm still convinced there are other locked things but you know at certain point when you stop paying for something they're probably done. Yeah. So I don't know. What happened was the question is how did I or arrange to at a certain point decided not to be in touch with my mother. How did I how do we make that arrangement that we wrote to each other. There's a point in the book that says.

Where it becomes very clear that it's not safe to be around my mother anymore and my mother refuses to go into. She refuses to voluntarily agree to get supervised help and a guardianship and we've taken it to court several times and and and and then the house she sells the house and she disappears and she disappears for about two years we don't hear from her. And and then at some point she showed up. Two years later at a friend a friend of mine's husband's office law office and Chicago and she wants my address and they won't give my address. So she gives them a post office box she won't give them her address either. So we that I mean most of those year she wouldn't give me her address either. So and so then I I got a post office box that a friend took care of in another stay

and we started writing so we really wrote to each other more like 15 years because there is a 2 2 year period where we didn't. I just didn't know where she was. I knew my mother my mother knew how to work the system in the sense that she was I never and I and I and through her through her journals I realize you know my my sense that she didn't ask people for money and that kind of thing. I was right. I mean a couple of she wrote in her journals a couple times that some nice man gave me $5 at the airport I wondered why he did that. You know she didn't understand why people would give her money and get real and it didn't happen that often. She she worked she knew how to get her. And you know she had got disability. She got you know public aid. Of course it's nothing. But she she knew

how to do that which is one of the reasons why she they wouldn't the court wouldn't give her a legal guardianship because that was the basic things she could buy cigarettes and she could balance a checkbook. So. You know but she was pretty pretty savvy and she figured out she'd always figure out where the shelters were. She often stayed at motels. But then sometimes for you know weeks she'd stay at the airport sleeping on a bench. I mean I had no idea. I mean it was pretty awful. You know is there something worse yeah if your child is out there homeless I mean I that I don't know what's worse. So you know I know what I did though is I took some of my mother's diaries and I like I wrote a monologue kind of like a one person

show thing in her voice and I then I elaborated and I created a whole story around around it as a like a theater piece. And I was writing and I wrote I had a novel that I was trying to write at some point and there was a character that just when such a minor character and she just wouldn't get out of there and then I thought you know you should start writing some essays and deal with this autobiographical material. So then I start writing essays about my brother and the connections we had through art and music and literature and then. And then I just thought this needs to be a memoir and never wanted to write a memoir. I don't even read that many memoirs. It's just I read graphic novels and poetry. But I just turned into a memoir. Let's head to head to B. So I read I very well one I read before I wrote this. I read it maybe in the early stages that I just loved was Nick Flynn's book another

another bullshit night in Suck City. And I just liked He's a poet and I liked his non-linear way of writing and I liked. His restraint in writing about such a painful subject and his humor sometimes in my book is not without humor. You know so it's not like it's a comedy book but it has some humor here and there. And so I would say that book has probably had a big influence on me. And then he gave me a great quote. I love Nick Flynn. Was there a period of time where she was stabilized with medication. You know I would say that given that perhaps many you know medication her med the medication wasn't so refined as it is now. Not that it's great but it's better.

And given the fact that she had such horrible experiences in hospitals with electric shock therapy that was very unrefined and given the fact that our family says Our family was so horrible. I mean in the sense that in that sense it was a horrible support system you know it was not a support system. She had a lot of things against her you know really. And then this was also. You know this is the period of time where they let everyone out you know into the streets and that the community support that was supposed to be there just wasn't there. There was a period of time though where there was a recovery center in our neighborhood that taught life skills to mentally ill people. And my mother learned how to cook and she went to a support group and those and there were brief

periods where she was better she did better in the sense she wasn't as paranoid and and so on. But I have to say when when that place closed down during the early years of the Reagan era it was bad. The statistic that I heard was within six months of that place closing down 40 percent of the people who went there committed suicide. That's horrible. And my mother definitely had no place to go. All subjects interests me. But I would say I'm probably a bit of a Buddhist myself. It helps me deal with everyday suffering. But I think that there's actually a program I don't know if it's still around in our area. I don't know if you know it's called Wind horse and and it's a it's a program for people who suffer from mental illness and they have a spiritual component and they have

it. They involve the community. And it's really been successful from what I've been told. It's not it's rather unconventional and I don't know if it's exactly sure what they do but I know they've had some success with with it. She my sister is about a year and a couple months older and I think from my sister and my sister read the book and she loved it and she said what was funny to her is that we and this is always happen that we actually have the same memories and we think we each own those memories. That's how I kind of in one way merge we were and the other thing that we notice is that there are different key events and we each remember being there alone. But we're each convinced we were the only there. We were the only one to witness that and actually.

Even something occurred as recent as when my mother was dying and my sister when she read this event in the book she said wow I remember being in the room with you. And you write it as if you're alone that's so interesting. And and I thought wow I guess I'm remembering it wrong or am I. And then I went back to my journal and and where I wrote that night I'm glad my sister wasn't in the room with me because this would have really upset her. So so. We have i know i know i know in some families I'm actually glad because I know it when someone writes a memoir sometimes families family members come forward and say that never happened in my case it was that happened. And I think I experienced it. So actually it's and what's the other thing that's been kind of

sort of validating is all my child all these childhood friends have come back to my life like all the little girls I played with in the story like the little girls you read about in the book. We're all buddies again and we'll and I'm going to see them next. We've been having these reunions and we're actually going on a trip this summer and they all have read the book and they have all just they remember everything like you wrote it just like it half so that's been really you know I know that's been pretty cool to say. Was there a stable adult. I have to say you know boy teachers are really important and good neighbors are really important. And we had some lovely wonderful kind neighbors. And I had a couple several amazing teachers. Who were who just were kind and sort of got that

I was. I'm not really shy now but I was dreadfully shy pretty withdrawn I think and given the situation and they were really they really worked at drawing me out and supporting being supportive as teachers and we had great across the street from my grandparents there was a family why talk about the Armstrongs who. They were just always there for us. And our next door neighbor from our next door neighbor next door to our grandparents up to go there all the time. So I mean I I just I had some older. Mentors and adults that I just I really loved and I reconnected with one of them at the DR but who live down our street. He he wrote me. I found him and because I learned that my mother always she continued to write a couple neighbors through even when she was homeless and I wanted at the

end of my mother's life. I wanted that I wanted all these people who knew my mother and loved her to know the end of her story to know that she didn't die in a park bench somewhere that she died in her daughter's arms. And I tracked down Dr. Bud who used to treat us for free. He he was a great guy and he was about 100 years old when I found him. And he possessed the only recording of my mother. It was a Chopin recording that she'd done on a cassette and I never got it because by the time I connected with him again he probably you know he probably passed away but he was going to look for it for me. But he was about to turn 100 and I didn't expect much but I think that. So the question is really what how this. Why do some memories emerge and some down. Well for. First of all with with TBI traumatic brain injury it's actually

unusual for you to lose a lot of long term memory you might a little bit at first but most p it's mostly your short term memory. And for some severely church people with very severe traumatic brain injury they will lose that. Some of them will lose even that habitual memory like how to ride a bike. Ok how to how do dress how to do things like that. I never lost that kind of memory but my short term memory was really very compromised and it still is sometimes when I'm over tired long term memory I think what I've learned is some people had a lot of trauma as children. That that makes your brain more vulnerable. And I also it was the second head injury I had in a year and I already had chunks of my past that I could not remember. And I think perhaps they were just so traumatic. However the part of my brain that deals with pictures has always

been and continues to be very spot on. And so I think because I'm such a visual thinker I think that if you know anything that involves pictures in any experience it was incredibly visual or took place say in a museum or took place in or involved in pictures or movies or something that was very very visually image driven. I'm I'm much more likely to recall it. So I mean I can I can remember pictures I did as a kid. Whether or not my mother had a paranoid reaction to my neighbors. She did sometimes however they work. It really depended on who they were. The this this family the Armstrongs she she really compared to other people really

trusted them. And. And she didn't trust many people at all so sometimes they were able to talk her down from doing something really awful like jumping off a balcony or something or. I think. But you know that there is this other thing going on the two though that that my Her mother my grandmother didn't want the neighbors to know about anything and didn't want to. It was just embarrassing to her. And she and her you know my grandparents didn't really like most people didn't understand mental illness. You know people don't understand it you know still people have read my book which I feel like as a pretty compassionate understanding book about mental illness I look in reviews and I hear somebody writing Boyd It was her

mother nuts so she was a blob of like totally like in this really negative like her mother was cruel and like totally not understanding. You know with no empathy none are staying. This is someone who is who is suffering really suffering. I mean imagine you're living with your voices are coming out of everywhere. For in some cases that's how it was for her and that was her reality. You know every day what's reality what do I trust. Who do I trust. So I continue to be amazed. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you write a book. It just doesn't. But hopefully it matters to some people. She asked of my grandparents tried to deal with her issues at all. My grandfather was very old world. My mother's father and quite a violent abusive guy himself.

And Ron just thought that my mother was acting up and in some way he didn't understand it. And he and my grandmother was sort of you know she was she had her own issues to deal with because she lived with a very abusive physically and verbally abusive guy. And also she was the kind of person who. I wanted people to think she was that she wanted people to think everything was OK and so they were. She was pretty inept and couldn't really handle it so very early on my sister and I had to sort of take charge and be the ones to call emergency services and do all that stuff. Unfortunately it's the way it was very surreal. How about being on FRESH AIR I mean some people have said this to some people talk to God in their heads I talk to Terry Gross So it's like

Terry where do you think. Well it's very. So that was kind of strange. She doesn't do. She doesn't have you in the studio. So you're in it. I was in a studio in Massachusetts and she was in Philadelphia. And it was it was great. I love talking and we talked talked a bit longer off record too. We talked a long time. The only downside was that I was supposed to be on the day of the unfortunate and tragic shootings occurred in Arizona and the promotional stuff for that for my interview. Before the shooting was all about you know this is a story about a woman with traumatic brain injury and and after her accident she understands her mother her schizo phrenic mother more because of her own brain issues or something I don't remember what it was. As soon as the

shootings occurred and they pushed me to the next day all the promotional stuff was her mother was violent. And I. You know if I had to do some damage control after that because. Yes my mother had some violent outbursts and yes I had to separate from her because it became dangerous. But it was all it was not just these few isolated violent things that were completely based on her trying to protect me from unseen forces. It was really you know her calling 100 times a day showing up at jobs me losing jobs because they were in it just being this perpetual non stop thing. But my mother was also incredibly loving and very caring and she adored me and would do anything for me.

And so that's you know the unfortunate thing is that a lot it's not just that promo you know it's I mean statistically people with schizophrenia are less likely to commit a violent crime than a so-called normal person. But we have this stereotype of the crazy person who's going to be violent and we see it in films we see it in books and we see it on TV and it's just there yes there are a few isolated incidents you know cases and had I don't know that that guy's story very well I filed it a little bit I'm not in the room with him I'm not in the I'm not in this family but all all it there is every indication that he was a disturbed person and he fell through the cracks and my mother was my mother fell through the cracks. So to circle back to Terry Gross. That is I hope I get to talk about this stuff in the media a little bit

more because I I I there's just been so much emphasis on the violence. You know in the VIE there is violence in my book. Yeah my mother did have a knife sometimes. But there's the other story too. You know she was a loving mother. She you know there was. It's interesting I don't know what they would have edited or kept in Had that not happen because we talked about my system of memory of remembering and mice my elaborate system of how I wrote and created this book because I every time I wrote something I'd forget it the next day or two days later. And so I sort of got to talk about my process of writing a little bit. But we did talk about other things there probably about was probably like 20 minutes it was cut out of it. So I don't know if some of that stuff would have been brought back in. So yeah I mean I feel like I'm always and I know people are going to talk about this I'm going to

be on a lot of other radio shows and I'm that was my very you know of course my very first shit radio show. So yeah. So I mean even though it's prerecorded I kept feeling like I can't really stop or can I it's Terry Gross. So thanks for coming. Thank you.