The older I get the more I realise that it is impossible to share everything. Things are always better - sweeter, more intense, more beautiful - when you have a witness. I guess that's why I spend so much time writing and archiving. I want to remember everything.
But it really is impossible, and I think lately I've been learning that sometimes our memories and that moment will just have to be enough. I think it was in Spain last September when our hosts took my best friend and me for a midnight ride to the other side of Seville after a night of the Flamenco. The streets were clear and the night quiet had settled itself within the streets. As we walked on those wide boulevards along the rio, skipping beneath the halo of the street lamps, I lamented not having a camera. And I remember my best friend touching my arm and telling me just to look at the wide expanse of the two towns, facing each other, the boulevard, the rio, and take a mental picture. She was telling me to enjoy the moment.
I've had a lot of moments this past year - the Boston snowfall and trudging through wind and sleet to get to my friend's oxtail stew, New York's Bryant park and that moment of clean sun along the Hudson outside Columbia, New Jersey and experimenting with chestnuts, chocolates, and marshmellows beside my other friend's fireplace, ringing in the new year watching fireworks from a balcony just above the Thames, that night in the bar in college. Regretfully, I was always half outside those moments because I wanted so much to remember them. The impetus to archive.
But I think something's changing.
I am learning that sometimes you don't have to know everything in order to be a witness to someone else's life. Sometimes you can just read it in their change of character - the nuances. I notice it a lot in my best friend. When she came over in September, I remember discovering so much of what she had experienced, her 'moments', just by the wisdom that came from her mouth. From her analysis of the world, and of people, I realised how many steps she had walked since we had last been together, how many imprints she had picked up from her day to day interactions and her own personal journey.
I hope people can read this week in me. I hope they can feel the warmth of the Italian-Canadian I met the first day of the conference - her beauty and grace and her kindness toward all strangers. I hope they can see her imprint on me - how immediate we became friends, how we would eat breakfast everyday together at 8 am - all museli and eggs and yogurt before indulging in pain au chocolate at the conference break later. I hope they can feel the laughter - the humour of the firey Irishman whose ironic wit had my new found friends and colleagues and me in stitches in the Irish bistro tonight and last. I hope they can see the emerald green hills, the double-marked green Gaelic and English signs, the green-painted pubs and the buildings made of white stone. I hope they can hear the Irish rolling their 'r's and the gentle yet fast pace of their language. The ebony hair, milk white skin, dancing emerald eyes, and the gentle voices of their women. And the most encompasing laughter of their men. Firey red hair. The Irish are a beautiful people. They are so funny - their humour ironic like the English but without the bitter self-deprecation and stiff upper lip. No. They are warm. Warm like a steaming bowl of porridge on a windy cold day. Warm like laughter. Warm like a soft hug. This conference held for me such singularity. And I feel like I lived it.
1 comment:
AUTHOR: an
DATE: 04/09/2008 01:32:12 PM
*smiles. vis-a-vis letters to a young poet. You are, afterall, a writer. It is the writer's default to be removed, to be the oberver, to be looking from the outside in. But it's not to say that you haven't been fully living in the moments you've had. I would know, I was there. Let's write that book. I feel like the first chapter is ready to be written. :)
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