Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Posted on by Live & Learn

How much space for remembering is there in a day? How much should there be? I think about this in my poetry. I don’t want to be a nostalgist. Yet I feed on memory, need it to make poems, the art that is made of the stuff I have: my life and the world around me. I am grateful for the tug of the day that gets us out of bed and propels us into our lives and responsibilities; memory can be a weight on that. And yet, in it floods, brought willfully, or brought on by a glimpse, a glance, a scent, a sound.

— Elizabeth Alexander, “The Light of the World: A Memoir.”

 

23 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake-Up Call”

  2. Sometimes I wonder about how we divide time as if it were a calculus of our own design – past, present and future – when in reality, we often form them into a complex, single unit which arouses more emotion than we can describe. A meteor shining straight to the heart. Or -if that’s too much for the morning – the past, present and future walked into a bar. It was tense….

    2. Finally it’ll become too much, the heartache. So I’ll be a supernova, one who was once a star but is now explosive, exploding, exploded. And it will be spectacular, you’ll be impressed by the amount of light I had inside of me.

      Stephanie Georgopulos, from “You Are The Sun,” Thought Catalog (20 January 2019)

  3. You’re right, Mimi’s comment knocks it out of the park. I have ridden a tidal wave of memories these past few days, marveling at the way our minds seek to marshal time, impose order and infuse meaning into seemingly meaningless moments. The power of traditions and pull of memory can be profound and bolsters in ways one doesn’t often realize.

  4. How I LOVE the English language. How can you say so much with so few words? It’s fascinating, liberating, enlightening. I’m so in agreement with E. Alexander.
    Thank you for sharing. You are a light in my small world.

    1. After all, it was even in the language we spoke here, its plain, unadorned beauty, its range of short, percussive verbs, its oracular strength, a language of the sermon and of world making, in tone and lexicon not just borrowed from the King James Bible but also shot through and through—even today—with the simple, active robustness of the Anglo-Saxon Christian Lord.

      — Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company, September 15, 2020)

  5. me too, so grateful for the tug of the day that gets us out of bed and propels us into our lives and responsibilities! Propels us into making new memories.

  6. “Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”

    ― Alain de Botton

  7. My daughter and her family created memories that will become traditions this year. Their small bubble of four, an almost 3-year-old, a 6-month-old, my daughter and son-in-love, had a quiet day. They lounged all day in ‘family-style-PJs’ all, meandered through gift opening, played games, built lego, savoured the preciousness of each moment. Instead of preparing a ‘grand feast’ they heated up the Indian dinner they’d ordered in the day before “Why take time out from spending time together,” my daughter said. She set the table (in style) and they ate by candelight.
    When the infants were tucked in their beds, they opened a bottle of bubbles, toasted one another and declared, “Best Christmas Yet!”
    I think that there are millions of us who have created new memories and the beginnings of new traditions this year.
    It wasn’t like Christmases past, but what was present, always, was the love and grace of the season. And what I will remember is not the missing of others but the joy of the quieter, softer pace of this season.
    Thank you for these beautiful shares this morning David — your first quote and then Mimi’s and then… you kept them coming, as did others. What a yummy feast.

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