on a maddening loop

Usually books and music inspire me more than films. Perhaps two hours of moving images fill my head to such a degree that there is no space left for independent thought. No soil untended for seeds of questions to take root.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was an exception to that rule. I entered into an engaging conversation with the characters, scenes and stories. I came away with far more questions than answers - but as always, I like it that way.

Some of the seedlings currently struggling to reach for the light include -

Is memory a loop? do new memories eventually overwrite and erase older, less cherished or less used ones? Perhaps memory is like a hard drive? so that when something goes wrong and you lose everything saved on it - only then do you remember that you haven’t backed it up? Only when lost do you cherish the memories that you stored away and never even glanced at. But how do you back up your mind? How do you preserve memories against mechanical failure? By taking their photos, by writing them down? Perhaps by telling their stories so they are shared between many rather than an unreliable few?

walking in my shoes

Books can be a lot like life. In some there can be so much to take in that one threatens to suffocate. In a case like that I hold my breath, squint and try to focus on the little things. The innocence amid experience.

In The End of Alice it was this moment that stayed with me - that made me want to reach my hand through the page and lift her out.

She crosses one leg over the other and I can’t help but notice, not the skinned knee, not the bruised shin, but the writing on the bottom of her shoe, neat print.

‘Tell me about your sneakers,’ I say, children’s feet of course being my area of expertise.

‘On the right is Emily Dickinson, 712, and on the left, the one you’re looking at, is Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus.” “Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air”’

She smiles. ‘It drives Mother crazy, especially when I put Ferlinghetti on my patent leathers. She hates modern poetry.’

A.M. Homes

And while on the subject of innocence and endings and beginnings - my word of the week. A word I never knew existed. A word so aware of itself - so very aptly named it makes me smile.

abecedarian \ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-uhn\ - one who is learning the alphabet; hence, a beginner