Memory Isn't Cohesive

"Because memory isn't cohesive
It isn't a solid line from one day to the next.
It comes in chunks and I don't know them as
a solid entity.  I know the little pieces of them that
were a particular moment.  It all seems to have music
flowing through it.  But not a song I could name,
or even hear fully."

I have no idea what this quote is from.  Maybe "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje?  Maybe something by Jeanette Winterson?   No idea.  It's what I put on the very first Photoshop cut'n'paste I ever did.  That quote, a picture of redwoods, a scan of a tea bag, the fortune from a cookie (inverted, so it's white font on black!), a Scrabble board and a package of chopsticks.  What does it all mean?  I am too deep for myself.

I found this gem, along with a copy paper box full of other random ephemera, in my hall closet.  I'm trying to collect all such material into one bin.  I'm also hunting for some postcards Jean sent me, probably in 1996.  I don't remember what these postcards look like.  I remember them as being lovely, lovely.   Whenever I think about collecting all our bits and pieces into one place, I think fondly of how nice these elusive postcards will look.  Though I don't know what they look like.  I'll know them when I find them.  I think there were a series of three or four of them.

These pockets of ephemera, though, bring up such a mix of emotion.  Part of me thinks, "Cool!! I'd forgotten that."  Part of me thinks, "Really?  I've taken up hall closet real estate for this?"  And usually, I only seem to "get" about a third of whatever it was I thought I needed to tell myself, in saving such things.  Were the chopsticks symbolic?  Or were they just near the scanner when I started experimenting?  No clue.  But I still like the phrase "memory isn't cohesive" and "I know the little pieces of them that were a particular moment."  So I guess I'm glad I stuck this on a shelf.  Even if I now plan to scan it and dump it.

Think what we've missed!

I've been doing an inventory of my archives lately.  The places I am recording things about my life, or about the boy's lives.  It's rather a stunning list.  Wanna see it?

1. Miles' Baby Book
2. Noah's Baby Book
3. The boy's Birthday books (which are pretty easy, as they only require up-dation about once a year)
4. The Family History Blog -- a project I've started to collect all sorts of family memories, stories, old photos...I'm attempting to farm this project out to Grandparents, as much as is possible.
5. Family Photo Albums (nearly caught up, between scans of old photos and digital photos...one or two more albums to finish, and then I'll just be making new albums as life goes on)
6. My daily journal (which I've taken to writing on a private blog, so that later editions need not be transcribed...)
7. The boy's day to day blog (Two New Little Cupcakes)
8. This blog, to which my commitment is clearly unflagging, what with this being my second post in two days.

Then, there are my "archives..." including old journals, letters and other ephemera that I am slowly, slowly, slowly beginning to digitize and organize in private blog form.  Talk about a bucket list project.

And yet....and yet....I've felt compelled lately to do MORE.  There are several moms out there on the internet doing all sorts of interesting projects that just SING to me.  Come join us!!  We will assimilate you!!  I envy them their creative spaces, their beautiful finished products and, heck, sometimes, even their bubbly girly handwriting.  

There's an angel that pops up in Job's Daughters lore, I don't know if she's really in the Bible, or if she's Job's specific, the Recording Angel.  She's there jotting down notes (and in this day and age, you'd have to think she's shooting some photos, making some YouTube videos, and checking various Facebook statuses) of everyone in the world, and noting who's Naughty and Nice.  I think Santa sends his elves to intern with her before they are promoted to his list making services.   Anyway, the Recording Angel.  She's probably my patron saint.

I tell myself that there is always a fine line where Recording = Not Actually Living, and that these blog moms may be missing out on the actual moments they are so busily shooting and scrapping.  (But darn, do they seem to go to fun places and have organized closets and make beautiful Halloween costumes.)  I remember that moments when I'm not actually savoring the awesomeness of two growing boys are wasted, even if I've managed to capture it perfectly in a photo.

The other thing that strikes me lately is how many events in my life I would have LOVED to have recorded with these new-fangled web thingies we love now.  Shoot, jean, if you'd blogged from France?  If H had Facebooked from Nicaragua?  I remember distinctly, somewhere around 2000, right when I started to take all those web classes, thinking, "Could I make a web space where all the teos could post little notes about what they were doing?  We could talk to each other online, leaving little comments on each others updates?"  Dude.  I INVENTED FACEBOOK.  Sorta.  What if I'd had a digital camera when I went to Wales?   What if I'd started using Photoshop earlier?   Think of the things we could have captured as short videos (can rap, polka breaks, Seder at 512 Second Street?  just to name a few)....

It would be nice, in that the digital trail would already be in place.  Keyword searchable, so perhaps we might have a record of what Jean really meant when she uttered "That's just one dipthong away from Honkey..."  Which I have scribbled on a piece of paper somewhere.  

On the other hand, we wouldn't have written as many letters.  We wrote a lot of letters.  This is one third of the letters I have organized and collected in one place.  We wrote LETTERS.  Anais Nin would be jealous of the letters we wrote.  They were juicy and long and frequent.  Partly because we were younger and had more disposable free time, and partly because we were full of angst and creativity and we were apart when we were used to being together.  But also, I think, partly we wrote such letters because we didn't have blogs or Facebook and we couldn't send text messages or check our email on our phones while waiting in line at the grocery store.