eight.
This newsletter is here to connect you to your five senses and your grief at times when life and death make no sense. Consider it an imperfect “grounding exercise” for the month.
I suppose memory is like the senses. Some parts are stronger or more memorable than others.
So what would it be like to have photographic memory? To retain the look of a person or place, to know exactly what was said and how it was said. I remember moods and emotion, even subtext, but forget the exact transcript. I remember rhythm, but forget order. I think that some part of me holds out that if I remembered better, maybe nothing could be lost — I could reverse what has passed.
I was twenty one when my mother died. Still when I remember her illness and death, and remember myself, I remember myself as a child, waiting to be told what to do. Ten years later, I sometimes think of myself as a person without a return address. If I got lost, nobody would find me, I’d have nowhere to return to.
This is especially true during the holidays, when people return home. I go back to the where I lived in for eighteen years. To a house not a home, but once a home. The gaps or omissions of tradition are hard, and the longing for what’s past is inevitable, but still, I’m grateful for somewhere to return to. Even if someone is not there, the memories are.
What images and memories do you return to? How do you remember them? In detail or in moods, transcribed or in code? What images bring you back? What images make you feel more isolated? And what do images do for you – when you want to remember or forget?
I see what’s past in what is present. I feel cold settling in. I smell the residue of pine sap on my fingers. I taste the childhood ick of bourbon in Mom’s bourbon balls. I hear the croon of Ave Maria and immediately soften. I grieve fullness: full stockings, full houses, a full family, a full heart.
FEEL - Zadie Smith on Joy and Pleasure
Zadie Smith on the slight distinction between pleasure and joy. Pleasure being the small, daily commonplaces that make you feel good throughout a day, and joy being a special state that you reach a handful of times in a life.
SEE - Stepmom
90’s Julia Roberts (and Nora Ephron) gave rom coms sophisticated quirk. Stepmom is a slightly different take. More a film about unexpected friendship and family. It was not until watching the film’s Christmas scene that I realized the last Christmas I yearned for.
SMELL - What Does Writing Smell Like
A cheeky conversation about writing’s components and the smells they’d elicit. We talk a lot about scent memory, but what about scent presence?
HEAR - Faretheewell
A song for driving alone and saying goodbye.
TASTE - My Father's Changing Hands
What’s lost and remembered in how things are felt and experienced.
GRIEVE - Good Grief
Grievers’ stories are told by stop motion garden critters.
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