“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” –Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Friday was Commencement; my second MA in three years, another wool robe, pomp, prayers, ceremony. I loved every minute of it. We’ve been saying “good bye” to people all weekend; outside my door, I can hear our neighbors and dear friends Shelly and Aaron tearing tape strips to back their boxes before moving West.
We’re moving next weekend, and have begun the task of sorting, giving things away to the Free Table, and identifying the things we love the most, and intend to keep forever. At least, for me, with every batch of items that I give away, I claim something else that I will always keep.
Three such things, randomly:
A heart-shaped Precious Moments porcelain dish with lid; it has two little girls and some pumpkins on it, for an October birthday. My oldest childhood friend gave it to me once for my birthday; our October birthdays are three days apart.
My copy of _The Redress of Poetry_, signed by Seamus Heaney–along with a photo of me and him in the barn in Vermont. In the photo, I am showing him another photo, of me with Christopher Ricks, and telling a funny story. This book changed the way I write, and consider writing.
A round, smooth rock from outside of one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I spent a day there, with the infants. I wrote the date and place on the back of the stone, but my writing is nearly worn away.
My memory does an excellent job, but I still clutch to a few special things.
Ah Heaney. I always liked his poem, “Oysters,” which ends: “I ate the day / Deliberately, that its tang / Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.”
thank you. xoxo