I’m writing in the living room of a rental house inhabited this week with four friends from seminary. We are reading (a little) theology together, and swapping stories from 30 years ago. Grateful to have carved out the time together, and nervous about rising COVID levels. One of us had it back in the fall. One of our mothers has it now. One not-yet-vaccinated young niece has it. All of our congregations are wrestling with new waves of policy-making related to the Delta variant. It’s good to be with old friends in the same trenches. We’ve known each other a long time. We’ve supported one another through dating woes, marriages, church calls and transitions, illness, death, parenting, and care-taking of parents as they age and their memories fade. In between chewing on chapters from Barth and handfuls of pistachios, we are telling tales from our twenties when we were young, and as nerdy as a group of seminarians can be. I’ll be honest, I remember fewer stories than my friends do. While that worries me a little (am I having memory issues, or am I simply not observant in the first place?) I’m grateful to figure in silly and significant memories of others.
Here’s this week’s prompt in a poem from Billy Collins. Where will your memory and imagination go on the page?
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
~ Billy Collins, “Forgetfulness” from Questions About Angels. Copyright © 1999 by Billy Collins.
A little writing advice
When I use a poem as a prompt, I am never sure what I’ll do with it going in. Sometimes a phrase jumps out at me: A memory “...decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.” Or “…a love poem that you used to know by heart.” I might write the phrase out, then just keep writing, and let my pen reveal whatever is in my brain that I haven’t consciously thought yet. Today, I am struck by these lines, “…and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.” As I am reading Karl Barth’s theology with my friends today, what else is slipping away? That will be my first line, and I’ll see where my thoughts go. Where will you start?
