monoceros blogsTonight, I played a song I haven't heard in nearly three years. I bought Lisa Thorson's CD, "Out To Sea," in my first semester at grad school. Listening to it brought me back to my Willowtree Apartment, back to the Serta bed where I sat and read each night before falling asleep. I remember reading Wicked and listening to Thorson's soft humming. Three years. A lot has happened since then, and I realize, a little sadly, how I've come to accept many things I never thought I would. Is it defeat, resignation, or just another form of endurance?
Part of me longs for that time three years ago. Oh, if I knew then what I knew now. But I am here now, sitting by my desk editing proofs, half a world away from that tiny apartment with the tree outside my window, that tiny apartment where someone else now reads and sleeps. The more Thorson's songs play here in this room in Singapore; the more it plays as I do different tasks and read different books, the more I will forget the nights I first listened to them in Ann Arbor. As Christina Rossetti wrote once upon a time, "Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad."
Posted by Monoceros at August 20, 2006 11:35 PMi think i know how you feel... there are so many songs, sights, and sceneries that trigger various memories of what i was, what i did, how i lived... some seemingly so distant that i wonder if the very essence of who i am has changed since i left the only home i knew over a decade ago as wee little tiggie...
i miss being me, in wales, in edinburgh, in tuebingen, and perhaps someday i'll miss being me in the twin-cities... or even me when i grew up in singapore.
but i know, every me in every place has a different struggle to get through, and 'moving on' is also a celebration of past survival... and of embracing new challenges and the anticipation of revisiting favourite places in the future.
big hugs, monoceros!
Posted by: tiggie at August 21, 2006 7:51 AM=)
that's one of my favourite poems. but sometimes, i wonder if i would rather hold on to memories and be sad than to just plain forget them and move on.
Thanks for sharing, tigs, yann. =) I suppose the thing is that there's something sad but romantic about the way we can't let go of the past, or that we can't retrieve what was in the past.
Posted by: monoceros at August 23, 2006 12:22 AM