Thank you Horty.
Tag: Kiss
More Manguso Memories
After yesterday’s post introducing Sarah Manguso in Manguso Magnificent, we’re back with more.
Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary:
I assumed that maximizing the breadth and depth of my autobiographical memory would be good for me, force me to write and live with greater care, but in the last thing one writer ever published, when he was almost ninety years old, he wrote a terrible warning. He said he’d liked remembering almost as much as he’d liked living but that in his old age , if he indulged in certain nostalgias, he would get lost in his memories. He’d have to wander them all night until morning. He responded to my fan letter when he was ninety. When he was ninety-one, he died. I just wanted to retain the whole memory of my life, to control the itinerary of my visitations , and to forget what I wanted to forget. Good luck with that, whispered the dead.
And here:
The least contaminated memory might exist in the brain of a patient with amnesia— in the brain of someone who cannot contaminate it by remembering it. With each recollection, the memory of it further degrades. The memory and maybe the fact of every kiss start disappearing the moment the two mouths part.
Received it with a kind of wonder, and kept it on our lips through the afternoon
Some of us were arriving, hungry
impatient, while others had eaten
and were leaving, bidding goodbye
to our friends, and among us
stood a pretty woman, blind,
her perfect fingers interwoven
about the top of her cane,
and she was bending forward,
open eyed, to find the knotted lips
of a man whose disfigured face
had been assembled out of scars
and who was leaving, hurrying off,
and though their kiss was brief
and askew and awkwardly pursed,
we all received it with a kind of
wonder, and kept it on our lips
through the afternoon.
~ Ted Kooser, “At Arby’s, At Noon“. Splitting an Order (Cooper Canyon Press, 2014)
Mr. Awesomeness aka Ted Kooser. In less than 100 words, he puts you at the scene at Arby’s and makes you feel.
Image Source: TheSensualStarfish
Some days, some days…
…after a long day, you need to hang out with your best friend
Notes:
- Source: themetapicture.com. Thank you Susan.
- Need more “Some days, Some days…” See Frog, Chicken, Bunny, Cat, Video Cam, Mama & Baby Hippo
