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Take me way back, take me way back, take me way back

October 2, 2020 by 25 Comments

I realized that I have been carrying within me all these years the child I once was, his particular language and details, his impatient and thirsty teeth wanting to dig into the cold flesh of a watermelon, waking up wondering only about one thing: “What is the sea like today? Is it flat as oil or ruffled white with the spit of waves?”

— Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

Notes:

  • Photo: DK, 6:43 am, Sept 30, 2020. The Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
  • Post title inspired by Van Morrison’s Hit: Take Me Back
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Smell the bliss of summer

August 11, 2020 by 37 Comments

Like clean sheets
On a breezy warm day
On a line
And walking through them
To feel the comfort on your skin
And smell the bliss of summer
As a child
Again

— Pascal Raymond Dorland @ paradoxdesign

Notes: Prose via Your Eyes Blaze Out. Photo: learnedtofly

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

August 10, 2020 by 16 Comments

Remembering that time …

when we had unrealized possibility,

the drifting period of our youth.

— Kate Zambreno, Screen Tests: Stories and Other Writing (Harper Perennial, July 23, 2019)

 

Photo: Alain Laboile

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What do I miss?

March 18, 2020 by 24 Comments

Using the following scale, CIRCLE a number to indicate what you miss about when you were younger and how much you miss it. 1 = Not at all, 9 = Very much.

Family

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Not having to worry

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Places

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Someone you loved

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Things you did

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The way people were

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Feelings you had

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The way society was

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Pet or pets

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Not knowing sad or evil things

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020) from “The Nostalgia Inventory” was developed by psychologist Krystine Batcho in 1995.

Notes: And,

Washington Politics
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Nightly News
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Global Pandemics
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Truth, Character, Honor
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Decency, Kindness
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Photo: (via Newthom)

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Lightly child, lightly

November 21, 2019 by 8 Comments

…We came out of a time when birth was happy…

We are prizes. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so important,
so healthy…

We were sold on dissatisfaction –…

I am very lucky but that’s not life. And maybe no more than
any person born in any year, I want but don’t know what, feel
unsettled in a sea of similarly restless faces. The breadth of
possibility makes choosing seem evasive. We decide but we are
slow and small with doubts.

It was 1954 when my parents moved to have room for me. I
remember a box my mother packed for me to store at school,
filled with canned milk and soup and Hershey bars.

Two thousand good nights. My checked uniform on a hook.
My face to the hall light because that felt like a day in the sun.
Not fear, not loneliness, but my preference for sleeping near the
window and near the floor, humming.

~ Killarney Clary, from “Who Whispered Near Me?”

Notes:

  • Poem Source: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: Blue Canary Night light
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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feels sacred, a snapshot of the world before everything in it changed

August 27, 2019 by 35 Comments

The mail sat in a pile on the counter by the stove. The National Geographic was rather lackluster that month. Several years ago I found that same issue in a used book store—December 1964—and have it here somewhere between all my books and papers. I doubt a thing like that is valuable fifty years later, but to me that magazine feels sacred, a snapshot of the world before everything in it changed for me. It was nothing special. The cover shows two ugly white birds, doves maybe, sitting on a cast-iron fence. A holy cross looms out of focus above them. The issue includes profiles of Washington, D.C., and some exotic vacation destinations in Mexico and the Middle East. That night, when it was new and still smelled of glue and ink, I opened it briefly to a picture of a palm tree against a pink sunset, then slapped it down on the kitchen table, disappointed. I preferred to read about places like India, Belarus, the slums of Brazil, the starving children in Africa.

~ Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen: A Novel

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Saturday Morning

March 30, 2019 by 19 Comments

At night, crickets sawed outside the windows of my childhood bedroom, and I read sixteen years of old journals, turning their pages into the early morning hours, as if I did not know what would happen next. There I was, same as ever, a linked paper chain of self-replication, continuously through time, the very same shorthand for a simple, happy life: muffin tins, cross-country skis, a desk by an open window. When had I made everything so complicated?

~ Sarah McColl, “Joy Enough: A Memoir.” (January, 2019)

Photo: Dan Smith

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It’s been a long day

February 26, 2019 by 30 Comments

I remembered the fearless, confident boy I used to be back then…I didn’t miss him. I only, sometimes, missed the high spirits that often used to seize me when I was ten. Would there ever be an event in my life that would catapult me back into that ecstatic, silly lightheartedness, even if only for a moment?

~ Benedict Wells, The End of Loneliness: A Novel (Penguin Books, January 29, 2019)

Notes:

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I yearn to go back…I want the days to be mid-summer all year long.

February 8, 2019 by 37 Comments

Notes:

  • Inspiration: Brian Kirk – “I want the long hours back but you can’t give me that. Sometimes I yearn to go back even further, to a world defined by family, fields and railway tracks, the sham abandon of the long school holidays. I want the days to be mid-summer all year long, those childhood games that lasted until darkness fell and twilight was a midnight walk back home with a ball at my feet and my head completely empty. Each night I close my eyes and we are young again, before time dragged us down its hungry maw. On waking I can feel I’m falling, but reaching out into the dark I find you, hold on tight.“
  • Photo (via newthom)
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Running. With Turtlenecks.

December 26, 2018 by 56 Comments

Christmas morning. I’m running.

35° F, feels like 26°.  Wind cuts, it’s wet, akin to wind coming off Lake Michigan in Chicago, the Windy City. It penetrates the bones. I shiver.

I pull down the zipper on my jacket, and reach for the zipper on my running shirt.  I zip it all the way up. This blocks the wind but triggers another, deeper, pain point.  The moisture wicking fabric on the running shirt wraps snugly around my Adam’s Apple. Oh, God. No. My hand instinctively claws at the shirt to pull it away, offering temporary relief, but no more. The shirt snaps back around my throat.

I scramble to unzip the jacket, to unzip the shirt, freeing my throat. The cold air swooshes in. But at least it’s free. Can’t have anything touching the Adam’s Apple.  We all have our tics. This one is mine. Raye speaks of a Medium calling for a new Puppy in 2019. I believe her, but don’t believe in Mediums, Tarot Cards or any other woo woo, but I shudder to think what the Medium would say about this Adam’s Apple thing – some horror in a prior life.

In his story titled “Little Birds“, Simon Van Booy describes memories as “Each year…putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out.” So this triggers a pulling out of a thing. My little bird. With its broken little wing. [Read more…]

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