1 DEAD IN ATTIC

What was your favorite essay/anecdote from 1 Dead in Attic? What was it that intrigued you about the essay/anecdote that you’ve chosen?  In what ways has the writer, Chris Rose, identified himself within the essay and how does his identity factor into his perspectives and point of view about the subject?

Pg. 56 Title: 1 Dead in Attic – 11/15/05

I have always been intrigued and touch by themes about memory and present times.  When someone thinks about memories and the present, sometimes there is a different way of seeing it.  Memories could be what you have left started but is not done yet, they are left in the past but allow you to survive in the future.  On certain events people tend to live the present experience with different perspectives.  A Master of Meditation from India once used this example: as in a movie, some people will like the landscapes, others will be focused in the colors or the music and others will be touched by the dialogues… after leaving the cinema there are going to be different opinions.  

In the present there are times in which you are not focused into some perspectives, some are forgotten and others are lost by your way of capturing the event.  Even though, together as a family you will all be sharing the same movie… how will the perspectives change the personal concept and life of the movie? 

At the beginning of the chapter, the author explains how he lives in this imaginary world were things seem to go as normal and functioning as they used to be.  Then he talks about his tendency of going back to his destroyed city, a place where he finds the house that was spray painted by the National Guards with the phrase: “1 DEAD IN ATTIC”.   He reflects about this sign as if it was something common around, as if it was not real in a way and as if it was part of his daily life.  After this, he tries to recreate the story of the dead person in the attic of that house, he asks himself whether or not he met this person in his past.  

All he is able to do right now is go back to the terrible scenery of his destroyed town.  There he finds himself inside terrible memories of his people and their lives...

He talks about some group of families called the Mardi Gras Indians, of how their families had returned to their homes and gave them some color with feathers, suits and sequins at their front doors.  After seeing this, he realizes that he didn’t really pay attention to these symbols in his past.  “I could have learned something about a people whose history is now but a sepia mist over back-of-town streets and neighborhoods that nobody’s ever heard of and where nobody lives and nothing ever happens anymore; a freeze-frame still in the air, a story of what we once were.” (Page 60)