object of memory

we must return to where it was lost / if we want to find it again

Tag: processing

  • the time it takes

    the time it takes

    Clearly, I never followed up on the post I threw up here in July. Life has been a whirlwind, but for the first time in half a decade, I can honestly say things are okay—more than okay. I might be tempting fate by admitting it, but it’s true. Sid has settled into a new school in a small city nearby and commutes by train each day. Emmett started middle school and is thriving. And I began teaching at a new school that already feels like a tight-knit community. It’s been a learning curve, but one I expected—and welcomed.

    This summer, I spent a lot of time working on personal things, the threads of which I’m still untangling, slowly. I’m realizing that ghosts, no matter how old, never truly vanish. They fade into the background but still tap you on the shoulder—or, sometimes, knock you down—despite their wispy, amorphous state. Memories are like time itself: fluid yet concrete, always there, moving with you—or through you.

    (more…)
  • i run to keep things whole

    i run to keep things whole


    Once upon a time, I stood at the full-wall kitchen window in my West Village office building and watched two planes crash into towers a mile downtown. I watched debris fall and gradually realized that it was not all pieces of plane and glass. I watched those towers pancake to the ground, the vision painfully surreal to process.

    I walked the eighty blocks back to my apartment, tuned the radio to NPR, and slumped down onto the kitchen floor. An hour later, unable to sit with my grief, I threw on my sneakers and ran. Uptown and downtown, I would have looped the bridges had they not been closed. I couldn’t stop running; I needed to feel my heart beat. And with every beat, I wondered how many other hearts had stopped.

    (more…)