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
Tag: childhood
What do I miss?
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)
Lightly child, lightly
…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.”
feels sacred, a snapshot of the world before everything in it changed
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.
Saturday Morning
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