About A Rape

[dedalus_1947]

Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape,

oilseed rape, rapa, rapeseed, and canola, is a bright

yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae,

the mustard or cabbage family.

(Wikipedia)

 

That’s how I started my original blog - with a clever definition of the “rape blossom” or rapeseed. It was meant to create an image in your mind of a yellow flower, in a panoramic field of solid yellow. I would also insert a photo of such a meadow, to give you a pictorial reference as well. Then I was going to quickly begin describing a presentation I made at school to the parents of fieldtrip group who were going to Washington D.C. You would read the dialogue of what I said about the trip, and my assurances of the safety of their children. All of this was meant to set up the real story I wanted to tell – a story about a rape; a rape that took place at my school over two months ago.

 

Things happen at schools, and they occur at three levels of perception and reality. There is the world of the students (and even that world is divided into grade levels and classes), the adult world of teachers and staff, and another adult world of parents and family. They are usually peaceful and harmonic worlds, with a natural gravitational pull centered on the education of children that allows these worlds to move far and near, with occasional intersections. However, an act of sexual violence or physical force has a way of stabbing straight through these planes of existence – wounding and smashing them together.

 

When I write personal narratives for this blog – I go where my mind leads, and write what occurs to me. It’s like a prose journey that I start at one place, never knowing where it will end; it’s a trip without a destination, until I arrive. For the first time in writing this blog, I realized that this story about a rape wouldn’t fit; the narrative journey would go too far. There were too many complex characters to introduce, too many plot twists to guide, and too many shocks and surprises to spring. They wouldn’t fit into one blog. My blogs are too long as it is! This one would have gone on, and on, and on. So I stopped.  I haven’t stopped the story, I can’t stop that story. That boat left the harbor and won’t stop until it reaches its destination. I’m compelled to write it; I’ve been haunted by that story for months. I just can’t write it here.

 

I’ve come to a demarcation line in my blog: do I write stories or personal essays? There is a big difference between a personal narrative about an event, and a story about an incident that deeply affected the lives and emotions of everyone involved. I started an essay about a rape at school that was leading me toward an extensive short story which needs to be fictionalized. There was no doubt in my mind; the piece was not a topic for a subjective personal essay. This story was simply too real, and thereby too complex and ambiguous to be told as FACT. This story had to be told in a manner that would preserve anonymity while pluming the depth of the people involved and their actions. It would be the only way to find some meaning in what occurred. So, my resolution was to write this essay about my epiphany on the differences between story and essay, and continue working on the story. Will I ever post it? I don’t know. I’ll have to see what it looks like when it’s done.