Washing away the history, cleansing the memory.
Lingering ghosts remain come morn
Washed up like flotsam, unrecognizable as experience
Broken shells and rotted kelp, no trace of history.
— WC Puppy, Tides Ablating
Recreating our memories works a bit like the camera obscura — a pinprick of light enters a black box, acting as a lens to project an inverted image on the opposite wall. We gather sensation and fleeting details to construct a fuller picture and we let in just enough light to make the hazy upside-down image. The letters to a younger self project has challenged our writers to search back into the vault of childhood. The letter-writing exercise has required them to focus brilliant light into the darkness, to study the images on the walls. It is hard work to reframe one’s experience to reconstruct narrative. The shifted perspective of maturity helps our writers be vulnerable and articulate their struggles.
In Ryan Rummel Brooks’s Letter to Younger Self:
Nobody knows the agony in those 16-year-old heartbeats better than I do. I’m so sorry for how much it hurts, but I’m going to tell you a spoiler: That hurt is the backdrop against which you will experience all the beautiful and fantastic joys of your life.
Tiffany Sewing writes in Battle:
My world as I knew it was quickly turning upside down. I soon began to be bullied by these friends. If I didn’t do everything they said or wanted they’d humiliate me and attack me both physically and verbally. I was starting to experience a pain and discontentment I had never felt before. I was conflicted and hurting and desperate to feel something different.
As the memories come into view, our letter writers bring advice, and more importantly the encouragement they needed when they were younger.
Self — get help! Get help before you drown in the pain of past trauma.
Self, don’t think you’re strong enough or smart enough to do it on your own.
Self, I’m 55 now and still lost in the shadow of past pain.
Self, stop running from the truth.
Self — get help before it’s too late.
Get help before you become a man swallowed by your pain.
— David Jackson
From Philip Thornton’s To the Kid That was Not There:
You don’t have to hurt people because you are hurting now. Trust me kid, tell someone! Trust someone enough to help yourself. I know you don’t have anyone who you think really cares about you. I know you do. Hey kid, it’s OK to be scared, it’s OK to feel fear. It’s a good motivator. Just don’t live there.
From Joey: Letter to Younger Self by Joseph Bernard:
Don’t be in a hurry to grow up. Make the most of your youth, it goes by in the blink of an eye. Pay attention in school. Don’t personalize everything. Don’t worry about people who you think are your friends. Learn as much as you can whenever you can. Believe in yourself. All that garbage and negativity people are telling you is just to tear you down.
This week I heard Michael Pollan speak with Dave Miller of OBP’s Think Out Loud about his new book A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. There is a notion that we have a continuous narrative thread that runs through us, helping us distinguish ourselves from the rest of creation and provide a backbone for describing who we were and who we are now. In a discussion about the self, Pollan reminds us that as time passes our bodies are remolded and reorganized on a cellular level. From the book, Pollan writes: “Our bodies are like the mythical ship of Theseus, which over the course of so many years had every one of its wooden planks replaced. Did it remain the same ship?” Similarly, our memories are recomposed each time we call them forward. As I listened to Pollan, I puzzled over why I was compelled to make this camera obscura metaphor. (After writing and rewriting these passages!) I have landed on the imperfect idea that we need a kind of magic box in which memory can alchemize and then be presented. | TDS
Memory does seem imperfect, maybe even malleable. These letters explore memory and how it impacts the present. In my life I have had to recall and process many things to understand who I am today. This idea is certainly demonstrated in this series. As always, thanks for publishing this.