non-linear memories-a few

  • remember the creeky, narrow, winding stairs up to the bedrooms of the farmhouse
  • remember pumping water from the well outside the kitchen door
  • remember the outhouse
  • remember cows that sleep standing
  • remember riding on the tractor, while the father plowed the field
  • remember the men going out at night to put out a grass fire after a lightning storm, and being told to be watchful of the snakes in the grass
  • remember birthday pony rides
  • remember throwing up after eating sauerkraut
  • remember visiting “Violet” who know one seems to know
  • remember Aunt Emily, who wasn’t a “real” relative but a close friend of Paternal Grand-mother. She knew Warner Van Braun, and gave me material to write a paper on space travel and rockets. She had been to Alaska, a very interesting woman.
  • remember the woman who i call “Buffalo woman” – paternal Grand-mother who baby sat 3 small children while father went on honeymoon with second wife in “Buffalo” (Niagara Falls)
  • remember dancing at a Maplewood-Y dance. Kept getting these pricks in my legs, turned out the boy had pinned his unraveled pant hem.
  • remember a kiss in the front Nazareth Girls High School, while watching the night sky (fun note Nazareth was founded right after the end of the Civil War)
  • remember a kiss in the dark at a small lake house off Beach Ave.
  • remember crossing the country with $50 to my name and a beaded necklace with a pink plastic elephant charm. the farthest i had ever been on a plane.
  • remember the transitional group of kids living on Oak Street panhandle, second story flat of a Victorian
  • remember all the artists living in and around The Pink Palace in the Corn Hill area of Rochester
  • remember the house burned down while we were out watching “Gimme Shelter”
  • remember Diane came back from Majorca and led the first group of friends into TM

to be continued…

all the Zen of remembering when, looking at the past 
as if to understand, while each glimpse back
the eyes looking change, a slightly different view unfolds,
it seemed so real, we still pretend