At the Tip of a Paring Knife

A high pitched crunch twisted time and place
The tiny sound slid time back to the kitchen of my childhood
Mom peeled brown skinned potatoes, twisted out the little eye
A memory at the tip of a paring knife

“Memory was supposed to fill time, but it made time a hole to be filled.”

~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

In the Stacks

Pages once white, clean and blank 

Words strung carefully across each page

Review - again.

Edit - again

Thoughts so clear when first put down

Still organized but

…..not quite right

Where they should be

Too much

Too little

One page at a time

One sentence at a time

Stack up the pages

Divide them in doable time spaces

Coloured paper clips for each ‘reading’

Don’t think about good or bad

How much or how many

Just do the work.

Done…….for today.

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

~ Jack Kerouac,  The Dharma Bums

Time for Repetition

It happened.

And may have been happening for a long time.

(I actually think it has, but don’t tell.)

Stories, gathered from long term memory, told….

and re-told……..and re-told…….

But in my defense ~ 

In the defense of seniors everywhere….

the wisdom of these stories has been foundational and I have just wanted to share ~

and share……and share ~ of course with different people and in a variety of situations.

Well, maybe those foundations are a bit crumbly

...in a bit of disrepair.

Repetition, in this case, is not practicing to perfection.

It is practicing til words fall apart like Scrabble tiles dumped out on the table.

Until short-term memory becomes long-term memory

there will not be much new to talk about.

 ~ but then it won’t be new, will it?

Sigh……..

“This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.”

~Gertrude Stein