This is very compelling and true, the battle we have with the past and with memory, the embracing and pushing away. I remember that young boy Jonathan. He was always a bright light shining through you. It’s good to read your words here.
I often wonder about those important moments in our childhood. As those memories grow over time, they can be overwhelming in their significance that we may not have been aware at the time, especially if we were quite young. Forgiveness should play a role in reducing our guilt for our ineffectiveness or incompetence or paralysis. Good writing Jonathan, thanks. Vulnerability is always hard to write about.
That's a subtle point Wes, and I totally agree. Compassion and forgiveness for oneself and for other actors in ones past is the only way to a come to terms with the present. We can see clearly how a world without those graces turns out. It would be wonderful to see what a world with them would be like.
For some reason I'll never know, I decided long ago to accept my shame for those moments when I was really lacking. It propels me to be a better man and to stick with doing the hard thing when I have to, mostly because I just don't want to carry any more shame, I'm full up to the gunwales. See, this is what your good writing does, dialogue.
That's a fine approach to life, acceptance of shame, or acceptance in general of the limits of ones own self and acceptance of the interdependence and mutuality of things. I think that's part of forgiveness. Thanks Wes, I love that comment.
As for writing, I really liked something @TroyPutney said in a previous post: "I think I write in order to share my experiences with others who may have experienced something similar, and in that act feel a little less alone in a world sleepwalking into extinction." I really liked that description, that good writing awakes a fascination in the experience of others, but also a feeling of mutual recognition, which brings us all closer in some way. I think writing about vulnerability does that, because that's a shared experience, but often hidden.
There’s a reason I’ve listened and read this successively over hours. Half asleep, I sought to absorb it, hearing you speak it, then falling into sleep dreaming first of the image of the lifeboat and letting water take me into a confused place where I swam wondering how I’d gotten back to the ocean, a recurring image in my own memory, young.
Later I listened again, wondering over the catastrophe of (section2 of this memoir) and attempting to parse the physical episode. It didn’t matter I decided and fell back asleep, this time in one of those used record stores we used to frequent looking and sometimes finding albums we’d had and lost or never had but wanted, row after row of albums - waking to be thinking I got the symbolism, music chasing us through decades a part of us.
This is remarkable - as are the comments - you find those things I think we all experience and wonder about, always triggered by that one image, series of notes, remembered face, that make up who we were and who we are (which is all of it).
Beautifully done, please excuse my long comment. Still floating in the piece.
This is (again) a wonderful comment Patris. There is so much here. It's always an honour to feel read (listened to), to feel seen and paid attention to. I'm feel very privileged. Thank you.
I hope you don't mind if I say a little about my thinking in trying to write this piece. Regarding the second section that you mentioned. I tried to write it in such a way that it was specific enough and yet also not too specific. I wanted to try to capture something of my own actual experience on that day, but also present enough ambiguity (maybe universality) that anyone could identify with the vulnerability and the lack of power. And to show that such painful or poignant moments in all of our lives can often be backdropped by such ordinariness, such mundanity.
In the third section I'm again trying to weave together my individual feelings into more a tapestry that feel like more mutual feelings. How I think about and deal with my own relationship to the past in order to conjure up in others those moments that shape all of us and form us or break us or sit within us, and how we all might find solace and consolation, and how we might forgive ourselves.
In an earlier piece I wrote "And I realised I do not need to rewrite my life. But instead forgive. And embrace. And be gracious. For none of this was my making. And then I was free." And it this "For this was none of my making" that seems important to me, as a way towards freeing ourselves through compassion.
I'm quite interested in time too, how it is both fluid and fixed, a theatre and a documentary, that it shapes us and we shape it through reconstruction. Maybe I need to try to get less stuff into these pieces!
Anyway, now it's my turn to ask you to excuse for the length of my comment :) Thanks again.
The complexity is part of its rhythm and why your writing is so rich, compelling to me (I find the same in Wes’ narratives and poetry). I’m selfish when I connect. More please.
I did wonder at the trauma you painted so vividly. Again I wondered if it was dreamt but it was too vivid not to hold experience.
Whatever it was there that you wanted to release must say that to me it seems there’s no rationale in carrying guilt from past acts (if that is what you mean in fact)as we look over our shoulders, provded we’ve not been made monster by it. We go forward expiating the sin, after all, better for it, (horribly enough), making life a little better for others.
So I’m obviously shameless (and a liar because I would go back if I could and not damage a young man many years ago).(so yes, guilt, but I shouldn’t be forgiven).
It’s a privilege to read you Jonathan, and the amazing people whose work I truly value here. And that’s an understatement.
It was a melodramatic evening of divorce that we young children were caught up in. Nothing more dreadful. Although that was dreadful enough.
I couldn't write differently if I tried (I have tried, and failed). I am finding a way to cut out and hold up wordy pieces of the world and now I'm addicted to it, so I'll continue. There's more coming your way Patris.
As far as shame and lies, we're all shameless liars! Maybe that's why we write (and read) as we do, to wallow in the brethren of shameful liars, an excellent order of literary monks if ever there was one :)
What an extraordinary recollection and contemplation on how memory, that most unreliable of narrators, can sometimes pummel and bully us. Thank you, Jonathan.
Memory is a beguiling siren for sure. It can be as fluid as water and as solid as ice. I suppose it’s our bravery in facing the truth in both that affects our present and future.
Thank you so much for reading Paul and for you insights Paul.
Jonathan, you are a truly lovely and gifted writer! Thank you for being authentic and vulnerable. You take every single reader you have along on your journey. That is a special gift for each of us. Thank you! XO
That’s such a generous and encouraging compliment Danielle. Thank you so much. It’s always such a fine line between trying to write with an honest personal voice and trying to also encompass more universal feelings, and I’m always uncertain about but (all we writers feel that I think) so, genuinely, thanks for your kind comment 🙏🏼
Really beautiful and haunting, Jonathan. There is so much pain in those words, and yet there's hope as well. "We're heading this way," is such a beautiful line and image.
I’m so glad you got that Troy. There is a resolution and quiet calm about the relationship to the past in the end, an understanding, a forgiving and moving on. That’s also why I say “I wish I could let him know” but I don’t say what I want him to know. I was hoping it was implicit that he should know life would right itself and all would be well.
Jonathan, thanks for telling me to return to this earlier post. It’s as mesmerizing read as the recent love poem. Childhood memories flitter to and fro in my reflections. Your phrasing makes the past, present, and future fluid and, instead of haunting—they are blended into a time to be savored.
This is very compelling and true, the battle we have with the past and with memory, the embracing and pushing away. I remember that young boy Jonathan. He was always a bright light shining through you. It’s good to read your words here.
Thanks so much Lily, I'm touched by your kind comment, and thanks for reading too.
I know your writing is often orientated around memoir so I thought you might enjoy this short piece that ponders the stories we tell ourselves: https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/a-murmuration-of-memories
I often wonder about those important moments in our childhood. As those memories grow over time, they can be overwhelming in their significance that we may not have been aware at the time, especially if we were quite young. Forgiveness should play a role in reducing our guilt for our ineffectiveness or incompetence or paralysis. Good writing Jonathan, thanks. Vulnerability is always hard to write about.
That's a subtle point Wes, and I totally agree. Compassion and forgiveness for oneself and for other actors in ones past is the only way to a come to terms with the present. We can see clearly how a world without those graces turns out. It would be wonderful to see what a world with them would be like.
Thanks so much for your perceptive comments Wes.
For some reason I'll never know, I decided long ago to accept my shame for those moments when I was really lacking. It propels me to be a better man and to stick with doing the hard thing when I have to, mostly because I just don't want to carry any more shame, I'm full up to the gunwales. See, this is what your good writing does, dialogue.
That's a fine approach to life, acceptance of shame, or acceptance in general of the limits of ones own self and acceptance of the interdependence and mutuality of things. I think that's part of forgiveness. Thanks Wes, I love that comment.
As for writing, I really liked something @TroyPutney said in a previous post: "I think I write in order to share my experiences with others who may have experienced something similar, and in that act feel a little less alone in a world sleepwalking into extinction." I really liked that description, that good writing awakes a fascination in the experience of others, but also a feeling of mutual recognition, which brings us all closer in some way. I think writing about vulnerability does that, because that's a shared experience, but often hidden.
One long exhale.
What is the value of a human life that has not been shaped and formed by the past?
And brave is the man that with one
hand , can hold hands with his younger self and with the other, hold on to his dog and breathe in the beauty of the day.
I quote you back all of your words. They will reverberate within me for a long time to come.
I think I’m in need of a dog hug from Ranger.
One long inhale.
It’s a wonderful thing, this life, to embrace, no matter what. Thanks so much for reading and getting it.
Give Ranger a hug from me too :)
So much emotion in this writing. Thank you for sharing this. 🌿
And thank you for reading and commenting Brian. It’s a pleasure to share these thoughts and writing with you.
There’s a reason I’ve listened and read this successively over hours. Half asleep, I sought to absorb it, hearing you speak it, then falling into sleep dreaming first of the image of the lifeboat and letting water take me into a confused place where I swam wondering how I’d gotten back to the ocean, a recurring image in my own memory, young.
Later I listened again, wondering over the catastrophe of (section2 of this memoir) and attempting to parse the physical episode. It didn’t matter I decided and fell back asleep, this time in one of those used record stores we used to frequent looking and sometimes finding albums we’d had and lost or never had but wanted, row after row of albums - waking to be thinking I got the symbolism, music chasing us through decades a part of us.
This is remarkable - as are the comments - you find those things I think we all experience and wonder about, always triggered by that one image, series of notes, remembered face, that make up who we were and who we are (which is all of it).
Beautifully done, please excuse my long comment. Still floating in the piece.
This is (again) a wonderful comment Patris. There is so much here. It's always an honour to feel read (listened to), to feel seen and paid attention to. I'm feel very privileged. Thank you.
I hope you don't mind if I say a little about my thinking in trying to write this piece. Regarding the second section that you mentioned. I tried to write it in such a way that it was specific enough and yet also not too specific. I wanted to try to capture something of my own actual experience on that day, but also present enough ambiguity (maybe universality) that anyone could identify with the vulnerability and the lack of power. And to show that such painful or poignant moments in all of our lives can often be backdropped by such ordinariness, such mundanity.
In the third section I'm again trying to weave together my individual feelings into more a tapestry that feel like more mutual feelings. How I think about and deal with my own relationship to the past in order to conjure up in others those moments that shape all of us and form us or break us or sit within us, and how we all might find solace and consolation, and how we might forgive ourselves.
In an earlier piece I wrote "And I realised I do not need to rewrite my life. But instead forgive. And embrace. And be gracious. For none of this was my making. And then I was free." And it this "For this was none of my making" that seems important to me, as a way towards freeing ourselves through compassion.
I'm quite interested in time too, how it is both fluid and fixed, a theatre and a documentary, that it shapes us and we shape it through reconstruction. Maybe I need to try to get less stuff into these pieces!
Anyway, now it's my turn to ask you to excuse for the length of my comment :) Thanks again.
Please do not edit back anything you write!
The complexity is part of its rhythm and why your writing is so rich, compelling to me (I find the same in Wes’ narratives and poetry). I’m selfish when I connect. More please.
I did wonder at the trauma you painted so vividly. Again I wondered if it was dreamt but it was too vivid not to hold experience.
Whatever it was there that you wanted to release must say that to me it seems there’s no rationale in carrying guilt from past acts (if that is what you mean in fact)as we look over our shoulders, provded we’ve not been made monster by it. We go forward expiating the sin, after all, better for it, (horribly enough), making life a little better for others.
So I’m obviously shameless (and a liar because I would go back if I could and not damage a young man many years ago).(so yes, guilt, but I shouldn’t be forgiven).
It’s a privilege to read you Jonathan, and the amazing people whose work I truly value here. And that’s an understatement.
It was a melodramatic evening of divorce that we young children were caught up in. Nothing more dreadful. Although that was dreadful enough.
I couldn't write differently if I tried (I have tried, and failed). I am finding a way to cut out and hold up wordy pieces of the world and now I'm addicted to it, so I'll continue. There's more coming your way Patris.
As far as shame and lies, we're all shameless liars! Maybe that's why we write (and read) as we do, to wallow in the brethren of shameful liars, an excellent order of literary monks if ever there was one :)
Arms around us all.
What an extraordinary recollection and contemplation on how memory, that most unreliable of narrators, can sometimes pummel and bully us. Thank you, Jonathan.
Memory is a beguiling siren for sure. It can be as fluid as water and as solid as ice. I suppose it’s our bravery in facing the truth in both that affects our present and future.
Thank you so much for reading Paul and for you insights Paul.
Beguilement is a good description, Jonathan.
Jonathan, you are a truly lovely and gifted writer! Thank you for being authentic and vulnerable. You take every single reader you have along on your journey. That is a special gift for each of us. Thank you! XO
That’s such a generous and encouraging compliment Danielle. Thank you so much. It’s always such a fine line between trying to write with an honest personal voice and trying to also encompass more universal feelings, and I’m always uncertain about but (all we writers feel that I think) so, genuinely, thanks for your kind comment 🙏🏼
There is such artistry in his words!
Thanks Stanley, I’m so grateful for your saying this :)
It’s so easy to say when it’s true!
Really beautiful and haunting, Jonathan. There is so much pain in those words, and yet there's hope as well. "We're heading this way," is such a beautiful line and image.
I’m so glad you got that Troy. There is a resolution and quiet calm about the relationship to the past in the end, an understanding, a forgiving and moving on. That’s also why I say “I wish I could let him know” but I don’t say what I want him to know. I was hoping it was implicit that he should know life would right itself and all would be well.
I love that line too, because so much in life we cannot know until we've experienced it for ourselves.
Jonathan, thanks for telling me to return to this earlier post. It’s as mesmerizing read as the recent love poem. Childhood memories flitter to and fro in my reflections. Your phrasing makes the past, present, and future fluid and, instead of haunting—they are blended into a time to be savored.