My gosh, this was a fun series. It's nice to think that we could have been friends if we'd known each other back in the day, I expect you would have fit into my high school friend group and would have felt at home at VCR parties (something I completely forgot to write about!) Now I feel the need to write a coda to our Letters series.
In a lot of ways I feel like everything I write this year on here will be a coda to our Letters in one way or another. VCR parties! Tell me more! My high school friends and I, for reasons I don't remember, always played The Man Who Fell to Earth at parties. The movie, I mean. It wasn't a weird game we played. It was always playing in the background.
THAT PHOTO. Julie. That photo is basically me today (obv. not the person, but everything about your comportment and dress). "Okey-dokey. I did your thing. Now can I go back to typing my stories?"
I do think a feeling of possibility in childhood is...like everything? (Even if it comes from TV, like it so often did for me.) Did you read The World Belonged to Us by Jacqueline Woodson and Leo Espinosa? Talk about a mood piece! I loved it.
I also loved, loved, loved your description of taking public transport and seeing yourself (amongst the others) reflected back at you. So great. There *is* something about the quality of reflection off city surfaces that makes me do a double-take...like, it's me, but I may not recognize myself for a split second...but maybe I feel my own eyes on me? And then there's a relief/happy feeling it's like, "OMG, it's me--I know me!" Maybe I'm taking that too far, but that's how I feel sometimes when I'm walking in a big city and catch a glance of myself unexpectedly in a window or something. It's the pleasure of realizing a stranger is not a stranger at all? (Not sure if that's the same for you! Just saying I identified with what you wrote in my way, too.)
Similarly loved the pre-internet mental (and physical) wandering. Creative restlessness--such a power to harness! You HAD to wander AND wonder...you couldn't just Google what this building or that answer was. Working things out for yourself takes a certain weird set of skills. Inventiveness, I suppose. Gumption. Determination. We were ALL armchair (and pavement) detectives back then. We had to be!
One good thing about the post-internet life is that a few clicks ago I found out that my very favorite local deli apparently carries Cel-Ray (I honestly had no idea...I'm mostly a coffee and matcha drinker). AND the same place apparently has knishes, too! Anyways, excited to mix it up next time I go there! (Maybe tomorrow! Oddly, I have a gift certificate there from my last birthday I somehow haven't used yet.)
"Uh oh, people"....I mean, that pretty much sums it up for me.
Yes, yes, the thing about catching your reflection in a shop window when you're walking down a city street is the same, that "it's me -- I know me!" that's exactly it. It's a little bit hearing a recording of your voice for the first time (IS that me?) but also this notion of seeing a friend, someone familiar, and then realizing it's you. (I have a strange overlap of this where my daughter Zuzu, who is 14 currently, looks a lot like me and sounds exactly like me, and in certain photos I can't tell which one of us it is, and she can pretend to be me on the phone. It's comforting and disconcerting. It's "I know me -- wait, that's not me!")
I haven't read The World Belonged to Us, yet. I will!
Let me know if you get a Cel-Ray and what you think.
Ah, that is so fun! (And crazy to imagine.) I only have sons, so I haven't had that exact experience but that would be pretty mind-boggling! LOL!
I definitely will report back, post-knish-and-Cel-Ray! Also, I love that Cel-Ray sounds like a old timey movie studio or something. Like a surrealist studio lot where the films are all in the style of Man Ray. LOL.
My gosh, this was a fun series. It's nice to think that we could have been friends if we'd known each other back in the day, I expect you would have fit into my high school friend group and would have felt at home at VCR parties (something I completely forgot to write about!) Now I feel the need to write a coda to our Letters series.
In a lot of ways I feel like everything I write this year on here will be a coda to our Letters in one way or another. VCR parties! Tell me more! My high school friends and I, for reasons I don't remember, always played The Man Who Fell to Earth at parties. The movie, I mean. It wasn't a weird game we played. It was always playing in the background.
THAT PHOTO. Julie. That photo is basically me today (obv. not the person, but everything about your comportment and dress). "Okey-dokey. I did your thing. Now can I go back to typing my stories?"
I do think a feeling of possibility in childhood is...like everything? (Even if it comes from TV, like it so often did for me.) Did you read The World Belonged to Us by Jacqueline Woodson and Leo Espinosa? Talk about a mood piece! I loved it.
I also loved, loved, loved your description of taking public transport and seeing yourself (amongst the others) reflected back at you. So great. There *is* something about the quality of reflection off city surfaces that makes me do a double-take...like, it's me, but I may not recognize myself for a split second...but maybe I feel my own eyes on me? And then there's a relief/happy feeling it's like, "OMG, it's me--I know me!" Maybe I'm taking that too far, but that's how I feel sometimes when I'm walking in a big city and catch a glance of myself unexpectedly in a window or something. It's the pleasure of realizing a stranger is not a stranger at all? (Not sure if that's the same for you! Just saying I identified with what you wrote in my way, too.)
Similarly loved the pre-internet mental (and physical) wandering. Creative restlessness--such a power to harness! You HAD to wander AND wonder...you couldn't just Google what this building or that answer was. Working things out for yourself takes a certain weird set of skills. Inventiveness, I suppose. Gumption. Determination. We were ALL armchair (and pavement) detectives back then. We had to be!
One good thing about the post-internet life is that a few clicks ago I found out that my very favorite local deli apparently carries Cel-Ray (I honestly had no idea...I'm mostly a coffee and matcha drinker). AND the same place apparently has knishes, too! Anyways, excited to mix it up next time I go there! (Maybe tomorrow! Oddly, I have a gift certificate there from my last birthday I somehow haven't used yet.)
"Uh oh, people"....I mean, that pretty much sums it up for me.
Happy Groundhog Day, Julie!
Yes, yes, the thing about catching your reflection in a shop window when you're walking down a city street is the same, that "it's me -- I know me!" that's exactly it. It's a little bit hearing a recording of your voice for the first time (IS that me?) but also this notion of seeing a friend, someone familiar, and then realizing it's you. (I have a strange overlap of this where my daughter Zuzu, who is 14 currently, looks a lot like me and sounds exactly like me, and in certain photos I can't tell which one of us it is, and she can pretend to be me on the phone. It's comforting and disconcerting. It's "I know me -- wait, that's not me!")
I haven't read The World Belonged to Us, yet. I will!
Let me know if you get a Cel-Ray and what you think.
Ah, that is so fun! (And crazy to imagine.) I only have sons, so I haven't had that exact experience but that would be pretty mind-boggling! LOL!
I definitely will report back, post-knish-and-Cel-Ray! Also, I love that Cel-Ray sounds like a old timey movie studio or something. Like a surrealist studio lot where the films are all in the style of Man Ray. LOL.