A journey looking through family photos. This is part of a larger piece about time alone in my family's summer home after the death of my parents: our music, our photos, and, above all, our letters.
Your meditation on the past and it’s artifacts has made me start thinking, even more about the shape of the future. Our children and grandchildren will have. There’s always been something ephemeral about a photograph, but now that none of them ever make it into printed form, it strikes me as such a loss. Our memories are so immediate to us, and yet so far away. The writing you do in this series is so deep and lovely Adam.
Thanks, Ben. The context for all of this might be lost at this point, but this written in France when the kids were young, and I wanted them to have some record of the major parts of my life. Childhood - and my parents, of course - were such a huge part of it. My mother only briefly knew my son (she died when he was three). He does not remember her. My father died a decade prior. So it was to give them -- and me -- some record of my youth. I hope I've done that. It is full of sadness when I look at it now, but spending too much time in memories inevitably is sad, I think. Not necessarily in a bad way, however. There are two big entries left now both related to writing oddly (my parents were both writers in a fashion). I've shared so much about myself in all of these posts, it may be interesting (I hope) to see some those threads come together. Then I'm off to a much lighter part of my life (and a particularly happy one.) There's only so much doom and gloom two children can take. 🤣 Thanks for your support as always.
The way you're exploring impermanence in these chapters is extraordinary. Each one evokes something distant in my memory, and gifts me with the joy of knowing I lived that beautiful experience, with those incredible people. And, yet, they and we will all fade as we drift down the river too one day -- becoming a distant memory until we are all just more of "their children buried long ago in the river woods behind them."
There's a pivot coming as this closes out that will make sense -- around language and what our parents leave us in writing (which, in its way, is actually permanent)
Your meditation on the past and it’s artifacts has made me start thinking, even more about the shape of the future. Our children and grandchildren will have. There’s always been something ephemeral about a photograph, but now that none of them ever make it into printed form, it strikes me as such a loss. Our memories are so immediate to us, and yet so far away. The writing you do in this series is so deep and lovely Adam.
Thanks, Ben. The context for all of this might be lost at this point, but this written in France when the kids were young, and I wanted them to have some record of the major parts of my life. Childhood - and my parents, of course - were such a huge part of it. My mother only briefly knew my son (she died when he was three). He does not remember her. My father died a decade prior. So it was to give them -- and me -- some record of my youth. I hope I've done that. It is full of sadness when I look at it now, but spending too much time in memories inevitably is sad, I think. Not necessarily in a bad way, however. There are two big entries left now both related to writing oddly (my parents were both writers in a fashion). I've shared so much about myself in all of these posts, it may be interesting (I hope) to see some those threads come together. Then I'm off to a much lighter part of my life (and a particularly happy one.) There's only so much doom and gloom two children can take. 🤣 Thanks for your support as always.
Fontanel Defense! Brilliant.
Thanks, Troy.
The way you're exploring impermanence in these chapters is extraordinary. Each one evokes something distant in my memory, and gifts me with the joy of knowing I lived that beautiful experience, with those incredible people. And, yet, they and we will all fade as we drift down the river too one day -- becoming a distant memory until we are all just more of "their children buried long ago in the river woods behind them."
There's a pivot coming as this closes out that will make sense -- around language and what our parents leave us in writing (which, in its way, is actually permanent)
I’m here for it!