Status Updates From Broken Places & Outer Space...

Could it be that Mary wrote Frankenstein as a way of facing her pain and fears? That she produced something so great and beyond herself from the grief she suffered? If this is true, then not only did Mary Shelley have her own “clay lady” (Frankenstein’s monster), but an entire genre of literature (science fiction) was launched by the Breaking.

Where Frida wants me to see her suffering and anguish, I also see a woman who has become more because of that suffering and anguish. I don’t see a stone column for a spine; I see a column of steel. The cracks in it make her more flexible. I don’t see nails; I see sensors that detect the world around her, bringing her more information than any purely organic human being. I see a cyborg.

I felt like a rusted robot. A machine with no waterproofing caught out in the rain, with no shelter nearby. No options. Vulnerable. I was now malfunctioning. I needed a hard reset.

We ran down the suburban Chicago sidewalks of 1982, like those relatives before us who happily ran down the dirt roads of Isiekenesi and Arondizuogu in Nigeria on their way to the market or school or wherever they were rushing to, like those of my stolen relatives who ran for their lives through the forests and swamps of the United States, and so the cycle continues.

What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become strengths greater than what we had when we were “normal” or unbroken. In much of science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.