In Practice: Another Echo

2017 was a miserable year. In America in particular, with the ushering in of a new and reactionary political regime, it was a time marked by violent assaults to one’s senses, to the safety and wellbeing of so many, and to language itself. Words fell apart. The night POTUS was elected, I sunk into bed and stared at the wall, only to see his shadow projected on it. I had been glued to election coverage for the past year, and on this darkest night realized I had let this man burn himself into the retina of my eye. The phenomenon was akin to an aural echo—an afterimage that lingered in sight from sustained exposure even after it had disappeared. I had lost control of the remote, the screen would not turn off…