These Days
on Memory and Words
These days, a few years short of seventy, I worry about my memory. Is it failing? Will I go down the Alzheimer’s road that led so many of my family (father, uncle, aunt) astray? Or is life just too busy, too full, too flooded with information in an information age? These days memory is tricky, but also amazing. At the same time I worry, I marvel at the things I am able to recover from the great dumping grounds of my brain.
A few months ago, I was at a book talk and signing for Kent Nerburn’s novel Lone Dog Road. In the midst of his talk, he said something about “leaning into the light” and I thought I recognized the phrase. I nudged the person next to me, a friend who made the sixty mile long drive with me to Cherry Street Books and said, ”leaning into the light is a line from Barry Lopez”. Mind you, my introduction to Lopez and his books went all the way back to the early 80’s. When we got back home, I looked it up and I was right.
"There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light". - Barry Lopez
Yesterday, something similar happened. Some thoughts I read in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer prompted me to write a poem (posted on Substack). I read that poem aloud at our book club meeting and the feel of the words on my tongue resonated. I thought to myself, “I’ve read about letting the roots dangle before”. I woke today with the urge to scour old notebooks for where I may have copied those lines out, savored them, reveled in them.
But first I tried the easier route, I googled “poem let the roots dangle” and there it was - not an excerpt from a poem but a whole short gut punch of a poem.
These Days by Charles Olson from “Collected Poems of Charles Olson—Excluding Maximus Poems” whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle And the dirt Just to make clear where they come from
I hadn’t remembered the poem exactly but it was very close to those dangling roots that tickled my memory. And though I didn’t remember the author, when faced with the resonance of the words, the earlier reading surfaced like a plant extracted from the ground and replanted. Here were those roots again, transplanted and growing in a new place.
The dangling roots of my love for poetry are the words. I have loved words since I was small and in church, reveling in the music of the liturgy, enthralled with how words put together in just the right way could make my senses soar. I collected words in notebooks. Looked up their meanings. Studied them when other kids were out on their bikes or throwing a ball.
Later, I started collecting all the rich plants the roots fed - stories, books, journals I filled in long hours by the river and in the dark of night. I clung jealously to all of them refusing to give them up when I moved and downsized. All those words, all those journals, all those books, all the memories. Holding on to these words, in all their forms, may be how I stave off the losses that come with age, to ward off my greatest fears - losing my sight, losing my memory, losing myself.
But for today, I have these wonderful words - dangling roots, leaning into the light - that stay with me and nourish me. And that is enough.
Memory By Laura L. Hansen Like dangling roots leaning into the light, I will rise again.
Lastly, when I look at the full Lopez quote, I think how very poignantly it speaks to our times.
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.” ― Barry Lopez
Redux of Sweet Imagination from yesterday’s post.:
Sweet Imagination By Laura L. Hansen - Thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Sweetgrass It thrives along disturbed edges, takes root in soil broken open by drama, perturbation. It can be seeded, but those older than us, more experienced, will tell you to palm away the soil and tamp the ragged raw roots into the hole, hand to earth, roots to soil. Disturbed earth is fertile only because it has lost its sense of self, lost its smoothed-over skin and become real. The packed earth of the well-trod path reveals nothing. Imagination takes root in the marginal, in rough edges. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice the established plant, tear it from its mooring in order to dangle the roots of its imagination, or yours, over fresh-turned soil.