POCKETS OF MEMORY
Today I’m entering the 16th journal of this blog. These journals, as mentioned once before, are of recycled paper with expansive blank pages, a supple spine that allows the book to lay flat when open and a pocket in the inside back cover which gets filled with memorabilia collected during the journey. Many of these remain in that pocket, but there are some that get transferred to the next and the next.
In front of each journal I place a Xerox of a photo of my daughter, then 3, and I outside our welfare subsidized home. This photo is up front because I want always to remember from whence I came and how far I’ve travelled. It is also a beautiful echo of the loving relationship we share today, after a couple of decades in the middle that were painful for us both.
Cradled in the back pocket, Isabel as an infant:
In my hair Salon with assistants, me extreme right:
Newly sober lying on the floor of my then studio, joyously covered in paint and oblivious to the fact that within weeks I would meet my soul-mate and break my neck, rendering me unable to paint for years to come:
Other photos nestling in the pocket are: Joel and me from 10 years ago, looking impossibly young compared to today’s reflected images:
Me as the bride at wedding to husband # 3:
My adoptive parents at my father’s 1968 retirement ceremony:
Me as a butterfly in the garden of my childhood:
My daughter, back in the 80’s as a Halloween Boy George:
A large pastel drawing from my Vessel series:
My stepdaughter and her now husband some 12 years ago:
My stepson and his now wife and their 2 day-old son, our grandson now 12:
This motley mix of photos spanning 60 years of my life is an incomplete record, large chunks missing courtesy of a boyfriend who in 1980 not only consistently beat me up, but when I finally managed to escape from him, fleeing his house with only the clothes on my back, burned boxes of my photos: decades of my life as a an 18 year-old hitchhiker in Europe, a teenage mod in London, a runway and print ad model in Vancouver, a professional dancer, my gypsy period in Mexico, not to mention my daughter’s baby pictures and photos of my life with husbands 1 through 3. Husband #4 managed to disappear all photos of our life together shortly after the marriage ended.
Images. Illusion. Memory. Evolution. We are all invested in these things. Some deep need to prove that we did this or that, went here and there, loved him and her; that we started there and have traveled to here.
We recently had a relative staying with us for a week; a relative to whom I am deeply connected, albeit not through blood as I am adopted, but who represents the only link of value to the family in which I grew up. Life didn’t deal her a kind hand parent-wise and there were many times during the week when I wished I had a photo of the vivid image I have of her as a one-year old, looking up at me from the floor with exuberant joy and wide eyed curiosity. I wanted to show her her true nature, to help her peel off the layers of repression that the cruelty of childhood have inveighed upon her.A photo sometimes really is worth a 1000 words. Like the one I took of her last week in which her innate beauty comes shining through because she is being seen by the only person with whom she feels safe.
The mysteries of life. Perhaps one of the biggest being how any of us survive childhood and, sadly, how few of us overcome it. Are there guardian angels? Is there a reason why some of us are born into slavery or poverty, starvation, disease, while others of us are graced with the proverbial silver spoon?
And how come some of us are able to escape what some call destiny while others settle for the lies they were told as children until the lies become a hardened, self-perpetuating reality? Is there such a thing as good luck? I say not. But I cannot answer the question as to why some of us are able to take responsibility for our lives while others hide in the shadow of their discontent.
everyEach time I come the end of one of these journals I gently take my daughter and me one step further from our past and place us in the preface to the next stage of life. And then, from the back pocket I take the random sampling of my life as a butterfly, as a young mother and on, through the dashed dreams, from poverty to abundance, from addiction to sobriety, injury to rehabilitation and from England to Tuscany via America and from husband #1 to my dear husband # 5 who, apart from loving me, has the good sense to be a photographer! Someone who not only would never throw my past onto the flames but who consistently records our fleeting time on earth, capturing the best of it, as is his nature. A man who literally sees the beauty in everything and everyone.
It doesn’t matter that we’ve never made albums, or that I have only a few photos of my past. One only needs a few images, burned onto paper or onto the retina; small dots along the way, which we join up by filling in the blanks with memory; a sliding screen of chosen moments. How we fill in those blanks is the story we create.
