Hi!

Happy Sunday. ❤

I read a sweet quote the other day that got me thinking.

Thinking about why we care so deeply that other people witness who we are and who we have been. About why, even if we remember being sixteen or twenty, it means so much to us to know that someone else knew us then too. That our lives have not existed within a vacuum, that they have, in fact, been witnessed. This is about that strange desire.

HOW I FIND MY BOOKS

People always ask me how I find good books to read, ones that inspire such aforementioned trains of thought. Studying literature, or paying an institution to essentially let me be a part of a glorified book club as I like to call it, definitely helps. I fell in love with Zadie Smith and Virginia Woolf through my professors, among countless others. But most of my favorite books are ones that I have found like Easter eggs in random corners of my life, or more accurately, the internet. The Marginalian, aka Maria Popova, introduced me to Patti Smith, Mary Oliver, Bill Hayes, and Oliver Sacks.

But the place I really stumble across gems, at the risk of slaughtering all credibility? Pinterest and Tumblr quotes. One of my favorite things to do to decompress at night is to listen to music and scroll through excerpts of prose and poetry like a good indie kid. Some are famous and some are just the midnight thoughts of a random teenager writing into the void, but they all interest me. I find them indulgent after a day of reading more serious or structured works. Anyway, I found this one quote the other night which not only led me to purchase the book that it is from but also to some thoughts on the human experience, as per usual.

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

-Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

REMEMBER ME

I love this because it gives voice to that severe human fear of fading into oblivion that tends to wrap it’s cold, dead hands around my warm throat every now and again, reminding me that there is death. Memento mori and whatnot. But specifically, tiny deaths, or deaths that happen to us all of the time, without us even knowing it. We grow and change and become new versions of our old selves and then we look back on those old selves and wonder if it was real. Or, at least I do.

I found this old video in my camera role the other day that I had completely forgotten about. It’s of my friend and I, sixteen and seventeen years old, dancing with each other in front of the sunset at an old cemetery that overlooked the ocean. Our bodies are nothing but black silhouettes against an orange and red sky, our long hair blowing in the warm October air as we twirled.

I remember that the video was her idea. We had been sitting in my car, talking and dreaming like the teenagers on the very cusp of life that we were, when she propped my phone on my dashboard, put on some music, and ran out into the road to dance like we were in some off road indie film. It was important for her to record those moments of our lives that were already halfway out of reach. And she wanted it to be on my phone, not hers. She wanted me to remember her, to remember us, to remember that those moments were real, even if they would one day feel like a dream. We seemed to be somewhat aware o that even then. Because they do, thinking about them now as I sit on my porch years later, feel like some kind of dream. But then here is this video in my hands. Here is all of this proof of who we were and what it felt like. And it means everything to me.

It’s rare for photos to actually capture what was being felt. But these are some of the truest depictions of seventeen that I have. The blurriness conveys the dizzy sensation of growing up. The darkness of the foreground captures the sheer anonymity that enshrouded those years. The ones where we were not anybody or anything yet. We were silently becoming, before the lights turned on and all of the eyes landed upon us and what we would do next. And the sunset? A perfectly cliché metaphor for that last year. The sun was going down on our adolescence and it was all that we could do to dance.

FREEZING OURSELVES IN TIME

I think we know it at the time, as least partly. There are plenty of moments that I can feel slipping away long before they are really gone. Why else do we take pictures, or keep diaries, or tell the same stories over and over again? We want to remember, and we want others to remember too. My journals are proof that I really was once ten years old, feeling anxious over the prospect of growing up. Or fifteen, thinking somewhat critically about the world for the first time. Or twenty, wondering where ten and fifteen went in such a hurry. It’s all there for me to hold in my hands and know to be true.

The same goes for people. I have known one of my friends since we were in sixth grade. Besides just from being a beautiful human, she’s so special to me because she remembers me and knows me in ways that new friends never could. We grew up alongside each other, reintroducing each other to our new selves as we came into them, year after year. As long as she exists, so too do her sides of our memories. I suppose that that is what I’m really trying to get at with all of this. We can remember ourselves, we can photograph and write about our lives, but other people to hold pieces that we don’t have, pieces that would have otherwise withered away and died.

Haven’t you ever been talking with an old friend, only for them to remember something that you don’t? Something that fills out the picture of your life just that much more? They give you a missing piece to your own story, one that was lost on you, but that stuck to them. And then you have it too, because they remembered. They knew you. They heard the tree fall in the middle of the forest, and that somehow makes it seem more real. I think it makes us feel less existentially doomed when we remember each other in those sweet, little ways.

THE DARK SIDE

But there’s another side too. The side of obsessive documentation. In high school, people used to say If you go to the beach, but you don’t post about it, did you really go to the beach? It makes me laugh now, mainly because I stopped social media years ago, but it’s still such a prevalent mindset in our society. We have this idea that everyone needs to know about all of the good things that are happening in our lives at all times. I always found that exhausting. I hated feeling like I couldn’t just enjoy a moment without needing to make sure all of my followers knew about it. When I deleted instagram, the liberation that washed over my life was unexplainable. It felt so cool to just live and not have to tell anyone about it.

So I suppose there’s a balance to be struck. For me, this has taken practice. Obviously, I use writing as my main way of documenting life. My journals and blog posts serve as records of my existence and that means the world to me. Photos are also big loves of mine. But I take them quickly and quietly. Throughout the day I will snap dozens of random photos and then not look at them until later. That way, I can document my life while still actively exploring it.

Have a beautiful week. Whether you share it, or keep it to yourself.

Love, m.

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