I can't sleep…
Love, these lines
accompany our want, nameless
or otherwise, and our waiting.
And since we’ve not learned
how not to want,
we’ve had to learn,
by waiting, how to wait.
—Li-Young Lee, from “The Waiting” in The City In Which I Love You
Notes: Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Gif: Newthom
In 1870, Emily Dickinson was said to describe poetry this way:
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?”
And, then you read a book, that does exactly that.
Continue reading “Feel as if the top of my head were taken off”
I could never turn back
any more than a record
can spin in reverse.
And all that was leading me where?
To this very moment…
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Notes: Photo – vinylgif.com. Poem: Fables of the Reconstruction
My husband, Rich, lost his memory after he was hit by a car and suffered traumatic brain injury. In a moment of perfect clarity he once described his loss like this. “Pretend you are walking up the street with your friend. You are looking in windows. But right behind you is a man with a huge paint roller filled with white paint and he is painting over everywhere you’ve been, erasing everything. He erases your friend. You don’t even remember his name.” It’s terrifying. Because we are we without five minutes ago? What are we without our stories? Where is the continuum of consciousness? Is it all one big lily pad of a moment?
~ Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir
Image: Street Art via mennyfox55
