Today, Ill be reading little bits from my memoir in progress, House on Fire, as a way of showing how our past influences how we express ourselves in the present, whether it be through images, or through words, or through our hands, in art or construction. Here is an excerpt from my childhood. Snapshots, really. In Winters, there were the nights when they’d sleep outside. He’d drag the mattress right out onto the snow, and next to a fire, they’d all cuddle under blankets, and watch as the stars ignited the sky. And she said, ’You’ll remember this one day. Us sleeping on the snow.’ She guessed maybe she would. She guessed it wasn’t possible to always live moments like that, and maybe that was why they were so special. She knew they weren’t normal. Normal families didn’t bring their mattresses outside on the snow in the middle of Winter, but when they were together, all them like that, she felt like they were all children anyway, she and her brother and they, so what did it matter. It was them, against the world, and they knew something about living the rest of the people didn’t. Summer days were good at the Little House. Their feet became like leather, tough and strong and brown. Shoes were for Winter and school. Summers you went barefoot. That’s just the way it was. When it cooled in the evenings, there were bonfires and her father would pull out his harmonica and strum the guitar, and, in these moments, the girl felt intensely alive, as though every cell of her belonged to everything else, and she fit, like a puzzle piece that has found its space into the larger picture on the box.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:45:42 +0000
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