Martyria (mar-tir’-i-a): Confirming something by referring to one’s own experience.
What gave me my ideas? My experience! Where else could they come from? We can’t be born with them or we’d all think alike. We’d all like Elvis. We’d all like ice cream. But, we don’t, and we may be considered crazy as a consequence. What is experience? It is anything you’re conscious of, and then, think about, which is a kind of experience too. So, you can’t be wrong just because your experience isn’t the same as somebody else’s: I look at the sunset and have a fit and start running around in circles. You look at the so-called same sunset and you take a picture and write a bullshit poem. Same sunset, different experiences. This is a problem with eyewitnesses, but it is too complicated to discuss here.
I used to spend a lot of time crushing insects with my hammer. I carried my hammer in my backpack. When I saw an insect, say an ant, I would stop and pull out my hammer and slam slam the ant. It’s crushed and gooey carcass made me happy, like a hug from my mother or a piece of chocolate cake. I would carefully clean off my hammer, preparing it for its next slam. It didn’t take much courage to kill insects, just viciousness and a lack of remorse.
But, it did take courage to kill the black widow in the wood pile. The surface was uneven and the Black Widow was suspended in a web with about 2” between it and woodpile. If my blow landed unevenly, there was a chance that the spider would fall on my naked leg (I was wearing shorts) and get me. As I swung my hammer, the spider jumped and landed on my wrist. I brushed it off before it could bite me. I stomped it under my Birkenstock, put my hammer away and ran home.
I still felt the Black Widow on my wrist. I opened my bedroom door and my bedroom was filled with spiders. They formed into a phalanx and came toward me. I ran outside screaming and locked myself in the family car. My mother unlocked it. I was slapping myself and yelling gibberish. An ambulance was summoned to take me to “Crystal Ribbon Sanatorium” for one week’s “observation.” After a week of being hosed down, taking hot baths, electric shocks, and wearing pajamas 24/7, I was released. I couldn’t remember anything and I drooled a lot and drew pictures of crushed insects. I asked for my hammer and my mother gave me a rubber one from a child’s toy tool set.
It’s been ten years since the black widow incident. I still hardly remember it, but I got a big black widow tattooed on the back of my neck. I still enjoy crushing insects and discover that the rubber hammer my mother gave me works quite well. It doesn’t mar surfaces. When I smash an insect and hear its exoskeleton crunch, I feel free. Sometimes I say the “Pledge of Allegiance” after a kill, with my hand over my heart.
This is but one example of how “experiences” have structured my life. Some other time we can discuss my performance art—shooting myself in the arm with a .22 caliber pistol, or windshield diving—colliding with trees not wearing a seatbelt. I also might talk about cockroach ranching. My apartment is my lone prarie.
Currently, I’m full time at “Crystal Ribbon.” I’m in the criminally insane wing. I became known as “Hammer Man” before I turned myself in. I didn’t kill anybody, but I tried. The rubber jammer didn’t do the job. It just left lumps and bruises.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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