Processing After the Fact
Belated notes on Caruth's trauma theory
”State of US.” Posca marker and fluid acrylics on sketch pad. 2026.
Jan. 13, 2026 Processing After the Fact: Belated notes on Caruth’s trauma theory There is no map to the trauma You can’t return to the scene Absorb the violent event And know it Aha Eureka. IT, The trauma, is less a pathology Than the gossamer strings of connection Between what is unknown And our words and our actions. Expression will find a way. Discombobulated and stretched with torsion, maybe, but she will sing and be and shape. We build a life around The wound A sinkhole full of bodies Demanding witness for A crisis in a tongue we don’t understand. We can’t speak the violation But we can watch how the letters Push up under the skin of our daily Sephora. The spelling error, the verbal slip, The way he always trips over the ottoman His Turkish mother-in-law bought from the dance school. These are the symptoms we must learn to read To admit to distortion, dishonest disease. He’ll repeat and repeat and repeat the title sequence. “Body Genius Falls in Own Living Room!” Reruns at 11 and 12 and unlucky 13. A good therapist, or an apt reader, Could creep my TV Guide like a diary-- This many Dick Van Dyke shows in a row Suggests that things are going pretty badly. I need a commercial for a product that Holds in one hand trauma as the destructive effect, And in the other, trauma as an enigma of survival. I need a word from our sponsor. I need a Scotchgard with discernment-- It will have made all the difference.