Time, Place, and Memory

I took a walk this afternoon. A park sits just to the west of the school stadium, and a nature trail winds through the woods of the park. Years ago, when I taught Emerson and Thoreau, I would walk my English classes to the park and have them sit and experience "nature," journaling about their experience.

I hadn't been on that path for years. It had changed a little. A few taller trees, a little less water in the pond thanks to our summer drought. A felt a moment of nostalgia, but the moment passed.

Earlier this week, I took another walk. The top 10% from our senior class were honored at KU's Memorial Union, and after the ceremony I strolled around the campus. I have very few memories of the campus from my years as a graduate student. I was also a new father and full-time teacher, so most of my memories are blurry at best--not to mention 75% of my classes met in Kansas City at a satellite campus. Most of my memories stem from other times, some distant and some very recent... some slightly bittersweet and some strong and good.

Here's what I've learned about place and memory: time passed isn't as much a factor to how I experience a place as the time in my life when I revisit it. The lenses I'm wearing now shape how I tell the stories of my memories, and memories without stories attached are just vague things without much form or shape.Like ghosts of feelings which, like other ghosts, can haunt.

Visiting those places often exorcises the ghosts and leaves the story. I want the story. The ghosts can stay behind.

For years, I used to feel sad when we left my mom's place in Clay Center. It was a deep, chest-squeezing sadness. I grew up in that house. My formative memories hold it at their core. Earlier this fall, as we drove away from the house for the last time, no sadness came. I was done with that part of my life--I knew it, and this part, where I am now, has no need for that old house. The lack of feeling almost surprised me, but it also reminded me that this is how it should be.The ghosts don't need to haunt us.

I have countless stories from my childhood--countless stories built from memories of that house, my neighbors, and the small town which raised me, but I don't carry sadness anymore. Stories are good, wholesome things. Human things. And I count myself lucky to be able to tell them.

Coffin Hop Day Two: Ghost Floats (and a new story)

Head over to Every Day Fiction to read "The Long Walk to Never" today. As always, comments and ratings are appreciated.

Here's another blast from the past, Coffin Hoppers: Ghost Floats, a fun drink with a spooky pedigree. I offer it word for word as it was in the original text, The Little Witch's Black Magic Cookbook by Linda Glovach.

20 minutes / 2 servings

You'll need a blender, measuring spoon, measuring cup, and glasses.

Ingredients:

1 cup prepared powdered milk (fresh milk won't work)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup diet soda

Ask your mother to get the blender out of the cupboard.

Put the milk and the vanilla in the blender. Slowly add the soda.

Blend at medium speed for two minutes. Pour into two glasses and put them in the freezer for ten minutes.

When you take the drink out of the freezer you will see the ghosts floating on top. This is a great drink fro mother witches on diets because it has only 57 calories*. And the little witches who are not on a diet can use regular soda.

*Yeah, I know. WTF? But the book was published in 1972. A whole helluva lot of witches were on diets back then. Or something like that.

Do you remember any recipes or special Halloween treats from your childhood?

WIP Wednesday: The Insidiousness of Memory

I'm making some revisions to In the Memory House, and as my intrepid protagonist finds her room, I realize my own memories have spilled onto the page.  Have you ever read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? You should. (It's rather creepy.)

I covered poor Kelsey's (the protag) room in yellow wallpaper.

The walls were hung with wallpaper—not a plain yellow, either. Upon closer inspection, she noted a subtle pattern of darker vertical lines, but the lines were made of a tiny, repeated shape. The shape reminded Kelsey of corn cobs. She was in the corn-cob room. Absurd. Her fingers touched the wall and found a slight texture, small bumps where the shapes rose from floor to ceiling. 

And as another character says:

“Yellow. Yech. It’s a rather mustardy shade, don’t you think?”

So there it is--my subconscious giving me details for a spooky room in a spookier house. Thanks Fred.

Have ever accidentally dropped details into a story from fragments of memory?

That's a Big...Pencil

This picture is for Karen Schindler:


I received the "big" pencil as a gift when I was nominated for Kansas Teacher of the Year in '06. The smaller (regular scale) version with my name is an artifact of my childhood. My dear mother ordered a box of personalized pencils. The red specimen might be the last survivor from that box.

I'm not teaching a class on hunting monsters. Yet.

But I do have the pencil.

Short Fuse

You wanna talk about a short fuse? How about an illusion?

Start with me: age ten, one "phantom" bomb, and one lit punk. The driveway needs a little loose gravel. Yeah.

A lit punk still smells like freedom and youth. The ten-year-old Aaron drops the glowing tip of that thing on the fuse and zap--nothing. I wait, the smoke dances into the afternoon air, and my little heart revolts, trying to run without the rest of the body.

At ten, my feet are a bit big for the job, and clumsy me skids across the loose gravel, crash. Bloody knees, a little red badge of courage for summer fun.

And bang. The bomb explodes, sending little specks of sawdust skyward. God bless America. Thank China for the cheap explosives.