The Cliffs

Very seldom do I require a highlighter and pencil to read a book of fiction. This book, The Cliffs, changed that. I believe it to be because it so closely resembles what and how I want to write. For Jane, it was “Those patches of the world where you could feel the life that had been lived there and was no more. New England was full of them. Boarded-up factories and state mental hospitals.” For me, it was boarded-up gas stations and state mental hospitals, and old, worn out homes. Those lives lived and now gone have never truly felt gone for me. It mattered not that I didn’t know them or had any earthly connection to them. It seems to be that the energy, the life force of the “them” remained behind. As tattooed on the waitresses wrist, Emily Dickinson’s line; “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” That is what brings my attention to them. It is a richness that pulls at parts of my soul and my imagination. Jane wonders if it is a leap to imagine that “trauma might infect the land on which it happened.” She speaks about the field of epigenetics, about the possibility that trauma, as well as other features of a life lived, can be passed down through the cells. In my own studies of neurobiological research on behavior, it is believed that each cell records memories and every embedded, trauma-related neuropathway has the opportunity to repeatedly reactivate the memories, sensations, and images contained within.

Emily Dickinson reminds us that life is short and to fully embrace each moment as these moments constitute a lived life and will never return again. However, for those living with a traumatic past, those moments are returned to again and again and are not experienced as sweet. I do not want to fall down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning and will end with this point; Jane’s attraction to boarded-up factories and state mental hospitals and my love of boarded-up gas stations and state mental hospitals exists because people existed at those places and lived whole lives and both Jane and I noticed. It is in the noticing that these lives come into view and are felt.