Jayleen Serrano
2021
As we settle into a second COVID winter, with Roe v. Wade in jeopardy, the Omicron variant on the rise, and Antarctica melting at record speeds, it seems a new emergency crops up every day. The world feels downright catastrophic, but we are expected to carry on as if nothing is wrong. To put our feelings away, grit our teeth, pretend we don’t see what we see, and finish our to-do lists. It’s impossible to process the amount of global trauma that looms over everything we do–we can’t swivel our heads fast enough to absorb every new, devastating event. We aren’t equipped to endure this much tragedy, and certainly not for this long. These emotions accumulate and we have nowhere to put them.
Catharsis is a process of purgation–of letting those feelings go. Catharsis, in the context of Platonism, refers to the soul’s ascension to knowledge. It is supposed to whittle everything but one’s truest self. It can also refer to the social phenomenon of collective trauma leading to group bonding. When something terrible happens to a community, they will often seek comfort in one another to validate each other’s experiences and provide stability. In theater and literature, catharsis refers to the effect tragedies have on their audiences, which are supposed to provide a sense of “purification” and “intellectual clarification.” And of course, catharsis can also be an intimately personal experience of reflection. But it is always a release.
As it turns out, dystopia can be a slow, surreal crawl. A constant buzz of anxiety, an overwhelming fatigue, tension like TV static in your chest. And all we can do is try not to buckle under the weight of it. But some days are harder than others. In a suffocating world, we wanted to give people a chance to breathe. We offered you the chance to confess, to vent, and to express. For this issue, we are debuting pieces that meditate on catharsis, and what it means to feel.
Thank you all for your support. We’ll see you again soon for Issue 06.