Lemon Tsupryk Q4 #3: Memory, Unblocked
«Memory is unblocked
With your head, dive underwater
Uncovering the days with your hands
Memory is unblocked
Look closely at the golden floor
Where everything is gently preserved»
(Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…
A hummingbird-heart-fast beat beating out a hyper metronome…)
That’s how time goes.
Fast, slowing down for no-one, sped up by the heat of the summer sun and revving up again, accelerating down the hill. The dry grass hill, green bits left over from spring rain washing the world clean and leaving for the year.
It’s still cold, I know.
It rained just last week, I know.
But I can smell summer.
I can feel my memory unlocking, the tobacco (or rather breath mint) tin in my chest squeaking its rusty hinges at the request of no-one but time. It’s thawing, starting to leak. Memories of past summers pouring like orange juice into swamp water with all the bright, liquid sun swirling and blooming deeper while dredging up all the bits of muck to the surface, some things I’d rather forget.
I step out of the house, or out of the classroom, and suddenly I’m three feet tall again and flying. On the swings, back and forth, back and forth. I look up and my entire field of view gets swallowed by the sky. The earth tilts on its axis.
Back, forth.
That’s how it spins, you know.
The earth.
At a 23-degree angle, while I go 80 degrees back, 80 degrees forth. I could go farther, probably, but the swing creaks already under the weight of all the things I remember and what I have forgotten and my heels scrape the rubber-coated playground floor if I don’t tuck my legs away at odd angles. Before I was flying, but now I become a suspended pendulum, detached from the world.
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Image: hand-drawn. The two verses at the beginning are translated from a new song by my favorite Russian band, you can listen to it here if you'd like. |
The clouds, stringy bits of down escaping my grandmother’s pillow, streak across the sky in a hurry.
Two black cats collude near the fence.
A grandpa sitting on the bench with his friends turns towards me, shields his face from the sun with his hand. He’s smiling. Is he thinking of youth? Because I am, even though mine is not all that far away just yet. All my past Junes and Julys are stacked like transparent photo negatives, images merging into each other—did I eat watermelon sitting on my grandmother’s lap 10 years ago or 11? Reaching the bottom of the pool used to be a faraway goal but now I can glide my hand across its smooth surface; fetch all the things that have sunk down there over the years. Peach pits and apple seeds, jump ropes, tickets for the Ferris wheel.
A decade is no longer more than my life.
How did that fact manage to sneak up on me?
It lay dormant all winter, it seems. All of life a mound of snow on top of me weighing me down, holding me on the ground. Every year. And every year the remembering starts, then ends, and all the bits of gold orange-juice sun go back in the breath mint tin again.
But my cheeks still hurt from smiling—isn’t that a good sign?
Hi Lemon! I loved your poetic your blog was this week and how especially relatable it is. From that time period where the weather was getting warmer, I suddenly found a positive outlook on life and the feeling of just anticipating the first day of summer. My brain automatically correlates the feeling of happiness with warmth, maybe because of summer break or how I am just itching to stop wearing hoodies, dreading the rain. I find myself also anticipating this when I am scrolling through TikToks and seeing people living their lives, going to the beach or when a song I used to play in the summer comes up on queue. I think summer also means something more compared to the other years because of how stressful this year, and how it is our last summer being in high school. Junior year, especially second semester, has taken such a huge toll on me that I just need a break––and not just a weekend or even a 3-day weekend. When you describe the memories of past summers “pouring like orange juice” this especially brought me back to my own memories, and made me even more excited. By the way, I love your drawing and the details it encompasses.
ReplyDeleteHi Lemon! I thought your blog was a beautiful way to articulate the feeling of nostalgia, as I have found myself feeling this way a lot more recently given the approaching end of junior year (“how did that fact manage to sneak up?”). I especially love your last few sentences, as they made me think and realize that not only is a decade no longer more than our lives, but our lives are closer to being two decades than one. That is insane for so many reasons to me, the main one probably being that I still think of myself as thirteen or fourteen years old in my head. I think there is something about this time of year in particular that makes us especially aware of how fast time seems to be moving.
ReplyDeleteI especially can understand the way you describe memory as something that is able to be instantly “unlocked” by a specific cue. Sometimes, all I have to do is listen to a particular song or be in a particular place, and then all of a sudden I am back in that memory. Initially, it is like no time has passed at all, but then I realize how much time has passed since that memory, and I am dumbfounded. I think it is fair to say that we are not truly aware of the perception of time until we decide to look back one day and appreciate how far we have come.
Also, I absolutely love your swing metaphor. I think it is the perfect way to describe that kind of “middle” point we are at in our lives right now. We are able to look back and remember those moments of being little children without a single care in the world, but then at the same time, we are at a point where we are naturally thinking about the future so much more. Thank you for making me reflect on this feeling!