July Golden Shovel #23

You haven’t been home for years. It’s time to revisit

The homestead. Except you have no homestead or a

Single home where you grew up. The past

Is a patchwork of city, country, suburb, an experience

Of all schoolgirls named Judy Linda, Nancy, Joyce, or

All boys named John, Bill, Mike, Spike. Perhaps

You have lived many lives coded with a tap

On a tab of memory that mixes the kaleidoscope of your

Past life or lives that cannot connect your heart to your feet.

 

source: Revisit a Past Experience or Perhaps Tap Your Feet

SOLTuesday: Slice of Memory

Last week I read the obituary of Helen Klaben Kahn, whose claim to fame was that after high school she moved to Alaska for adventure, and a year later, on a flight to California, the small plane carrying only her and a pilot crashed and they were marooned for 49 days before rescue. A few years later, she wrote a book, Hey, I’m Alive, which was made into a TV movie.

            I read the obit because Helen was my age, 76. But what provoked my memory is that she grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. I lived in Bensonhurst from ages 5 to 8, and one of my best friends was named Helen.

            What are the odds that these two Helens are the same? I could go to the New York Public Library, where city phone books are available on microfilm, to see whether someone with the last name Klaben lived on 75th or 76th Street around the corner from 20th Avenue in Brooklyn. And if she is?

            It’s too late to make contact with her. But I could write something, fictional or non, about her, and me, and Alice, my other friend. 

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.

 

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SOLSC: Memory Stutter-step

            Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, who reported the latest in a soap opera occurring in her university department. That reminded me of a Facebook post I’d seen recently about a more theoretical discussion of departmental hiring, which I tried to recount to my friend. But my account wasn’t very clear, my friend said she’d need to see it, so I said I’d ask the poster’s permission to send it to her.

            On returning home, I promptly forgot that I was going to do any of the above.

            This morning as I was getting dressed, I remembered the conversation with my friend, and what I’d offered to send her.

            This lapse of many hours between my knowing something and remembering to do that something is not a function of age. It’s been true of how my mind words for many, many years. It used to drive my husband crazy that I’d have a conversation with our daughter one day, and tell him about some piece of information I’d learned from her the next day because I had “just remembered it.” He could not understand how that could be true. But that is just how my mind works.

            How does your mind and memory work? Do you notice odd quirks about yourself that don’t seem normal, but are normal for you?

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I’m participating in the 11th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 22 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

SOL Tuesday: Grief, Revisited

I met with my financial planner today at TIAA. She was looking through her folder for me and noticed that all the statements there were from 2012. I said that was probably from when Jack and I had our meeting with her after our former financial planner at TIAA was promoted.

            I then had a memory flash of Jack sitting in the other chair in our planner’s office, a memory that felt so solid I could almost see him. The presence of the memory against the absence of his physical self felt so jarring. Is this what grief is? The presence of absence, and the absence of presence.

            There’s nothing comforting about this, but I don’t want to lose my connection to the loss that creates the lack of comfort. Is this morbid? Is it healthy for me? What does “healthy grieving” mean? Why even think in those terms?

            I so want to talk to Jack about this. We had so many family members die in the past 10-15 years: his older brother and sister, and his uncle Bill; my mother, father, and sister. We talked about it, but I doubt I wrote anything based on our discussions. Our words went into the ether, and Jack has joined them.

Essay #9: Dream & Memory

The brain doesn’t distinguish between dreams and memories. So said some article I read in the Science Times some years ago. But what does this mean?

            If I dream something, will I later think it is a memory of something that happened while I was awake? Or is it simply that the same parts of the brain are at work when we dream and when we remember? What is happening when we “remember,” anyway? Memories aren’t snapshots stored in synapses that come to consciousness in identical form every time we think of the, again according to articles I’ve read. Instead, eachact of remembering recreates the memory, which feels the same, even though it may vary in detail that we don’t notice.

            So, too, with dreams. I’ve been writing many of my dreams as soon as I wake in a dream book for 20 years. Sometimes as I wake, I remember only the most recent part, i.e., the ending of the dream. But as I start to write, more detail of what led up to that ending comes to mind, and I write that too. Am I actually “remembering” more of the dream, or is my brain creating the dream as memory as I write? How much is the dream or memory contaminated by my imagination? And why do I think it’s “contamination”?

            All of it—dream, memory, imagination—is created by my own brain. None of those—dream, memory, imagination—exists independently of me, my mind, my brain. Until I write them down. Once on paper or computer screen, the words exist independently of me, available for anyone else to read, comment on, ignore, argue with. They become part of a conversation connecting me with other humans. Words make the dream, memory, imagination social.

            Maybe this is something Donald Trump does not understand about his tweets. The words his fingers create are no longer only in his head. Other people read them and respond, not necessarily in the way he wants them to, if he even has a thought about the effect of his words on anyone but himself.

            What does he think his words do, other than express his feelings of the moment? What is it like to be a thought in Donald Trump’s mind? George Will, the conservative commentator, said last spring that Trump doesn’t know what it means to know something. A writer in the National Journals says Trump resembles an American monarchy, with him in every corner of public life, the actions of his family followed like the activities of the British royal family. And it’s looked to me like those around him behave like courtiers, yessing him and manipulating him so they can remain able to prevent him from inflicting damage on the world.

SOLSC Day 24: Colliding Lives

My lives collided this afternoon. Have I mentioned that I seem to be living three lives simultaneously? There’s the life of memory and the past, remembering Jack and  random thoughts, experiences, stories. There’s my life now, moving on, on my own. Then there’s the imaginary life of what Jack would have thought, liked, hated, what we would have talked and argued about.

           Today the life when Jack was still alive and the life when he isn’t crashed together when I ran into an acquaintance in our neighborhood. I was at Mondel’s buying custom chocolate Easter eggs, and the husband of a woman who I first met at the sandbox when our kids were toddlers came in. I’d probably last seen them in November, after Jack had fallen at home.

            “How’s he doing?” the neighbor asked. My heart clutched. He didn’t know, and I had to tell him.

            I hate these moments. Later today I’m getting a refresher with my physical therapist, whose colleague treated Jack over the past two years. I will have to tell him, but I’ve been preparing myself. In Mondel’s, it was unexpected. I told him, he was shocked and sorry, and I left the store. But I had to sit down outside on a street bench to put myself back together. These moments, when the life when Jack was alive and the life when he isn’t collide suddenly, feel like the emotional atoms of my being have scattered like pool balls. I need to gather them back into the frame of my body.

SOLSC Day 11: Poetry Underground

The New York City subway system has, since 1992, had a Poetry in Motion program, with a new poem posted in subway cars every so often. I saw the current poem, “Heaven,” by Patrick Phillips, this evening, and it so spoke to me. It was as though someone was tuned in to what I need and have been thinking. I wish I had written this.

Heaven

by Patrick Phillips

It will be the past
and we'll live there together.

Not as it was to live
but as it is remembered.

It will be the past.
We'll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,
and lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.
And it will last forever.

Catching Up, II

On Sunday, I attended a Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon in Brooklyn(link). Nandi Kaye led us through a mental, then we wrote, then we wrote some more and we had a physical writer warmup. Here is what I wrote.

I

I remember because that is all I have left. Someone once wrote, "Death ends a life, but not a relationship...." Death ends the accumulation of new memories, while the old memories remain as fresh or as stale as they want to be. Memories hide in the weeds of my forgetfulness, they jump out to startle me as I lie abed. Memory cannot wrap arms around me, cannot kiss gently, or passionately. Memory rouses grief and mourning, but forgetfulness erases life, us, me. Memory wants me to forget loss, to move on, to move ahead. But memory also anchors me to the moment of death, with a rope stretching, stretching, stretching without breaking.

II

Happiness comes from my pink hair. Jack loved my pink hair. When strangers say they love my pink hair, I feel 50 degrees warmer. I glow. I feel connected. My pink hair is the magic token I've looked for all my life. My pink hair is the guardian angels protecting me from despair. My pink hair is punk, is rock and roll, is a happiness drug. My pink hair matches all of my favorite clothes, well, almost.

 

Remembering and Forgetting

My husband’s memorial is in three days, and I am only now knuckling down to write up my comments. (Yes, I do have to write out what I will say. I have only once ever given a talk based only on notes, and I have given many talks. I’m good at writing the way I speak.)

            It is not easy. First, it has to be about him, not about me. I have been writing memoir quite a bit lately, which is ultimately about me. It’s hard to shift the focus. Second, I know there are stories he used to tell, about his growing up, his family, his various workplaces, and I used to think, I should write these down — but I never did. My memory is not that good. He remembered stories about my life that I’d forgotten. Now his memories are gone. But I'm trying not to think about what's gone, just what I do remember.

            Third, our daughter is going to speak at the memorial, so I have to make sure I don’t steal any of her material, or say anything that might embarrass her. So we’re e-mailing back and forth.

            Fourth, fact-checking. Did the friend I think recommended a job really do it, or was it someone else? (E-mai

ls.) What was the name of the editor on the start-up magazine he worked on for a week? I spend time on Google, then decide the whole story isn’t necessary.

            Fifth, his oldest friend and his younger brother cannot come to the memorial from their homes in Colorado and Kansas. So they wrote reminiscences and sent them to me. The friend needed an editorial discussion to encourage him to write more, while the brother needed a heavy editorial hand to cut down what he’d sent. (These will be read by a friend and my younger brother, respectively. So I have to send the finished products off to them as well.)

            So that’s been my day so far. Still working away.

Poem a Day, #17 (my something, the something)

The prompt is "My (blank), the (blank)" so here's my effort.

My Memory, the Traitor

I learned early my memory can lie.

The memory:

Riding in a car on a summer day,

Riding to the beach on the Housatonic River,

Listening to “Volare,” sung by Domenico Modugno.

The truth:

I was not living anywhere near the Housatonic River

When “Volare” was released,

In 1958.

In 1958 I lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania,

Nowhere near a beach I could be riding to.

In adulthood, my memory worked well,

Well enough to make a living as a copy editor,

Remembering the spelling of a name

Many pages ago,

Remembering the title of a character

Many pages ago,

Remembering whether the word “sychophant”

Had been used to describe the assistant director

Many pages ago.

Memory matched up with locations and years,

As I moved homes or jobs.

Past 70, memory doesn’t lie, it fades.

What is the name of that song on the radio?

The melody and rhythm as familiar as an old sweater,

But the singer, the lyrics are lost in a fog.

I wake in the morning and puzzle out

The name of the day, is it Sunday or Monday?

Or maybe Wednesday?

Why did I come into the kitchen?

Should I have gone to the bedroom instead?

What is the last name of my college roommate,

The author of that great book I read 10 years ago,

The actress who lived across the street,

The Mets pitcher of the playoff game we saw in 2006?

I still remember what my keys are for, but

Not where I left them.

What is to be done?

And where are my glasses?

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png