A group of writers gathered in my studio on Thursday morning (August 27, 2015) for the third session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography" and some of us decided to share excerpts from our memory lists right here.
I love to read mystery novels but I can't stand the suspense so I read the last page first, for reassurance, which doesn't really spoil things because I usually forget what I read within an hour.
When we were children I was in awe of my sister's ability to burp on demand at the dinner table, and equally amazed that she never got in trouble for doing that.
When I was 14 years old my parents bought me an expensive guitar for my birthday, and I used my allowance to buy the Joan Baez songbook. I'd sit on my bed for hours at a time, strum-strum-strumming my way through the book. I thought I sounded amazing. My mother said that every song sounded the same and my father said I should sing "inside my head" instead of out loud.
I remember struggling with math in school but my mom helped me, and I actually discovered that I like logic proofs, geometry, and algebra.
I remember begging my parents for puppies and when I finally got them I learned what the frustrations of parenthood would feel like — two puppies, and every time I turned my back they'd relieve themselves. There was hardly any time to sit for a second to collect my thoughts.
I remember rolling down the green, green slope of a hill until I was dizzy and when I landed at the bottom, still laughing, I had to spit grass out of my mouth. Then I did it all again.
I remember when parking meters only cost $1.00 an hour, but then, I remember when a phone call cost a nickel. In fact, I remember those phone booths, but now I’m thinking the Port-A-John industry has taken over the design.
I remember penny postcards that arrived from friends and family announcing the Grand Canyon was a sight to behold, or how it had rained everyday but one for a week in Nova Scotia. No one ever used the word “awesome” on a penny postcard: it had not yet entered the world of the vernacular.
I remember a song with lyrics that said “I forgot to remember to forget you” — an appealing verbal somersault.
I remember my first teaching job: the only "Yankee" on staff; the only woman whose husband wasn't an Army officer; the only person in the school who spoke without a southern twang.
I remember the ocean. Green and gray and so much more emotionally developed than I am. I wanted to throw myself into it, not so much to eviscerate my experience but to make it so much more meaningful.
I remember crying on the roof at 5 in the morning. The sun was rising over the Manhattan skyline and something about the series of orgasms and revelations I had experienced the night before had left me utterly dismantled. The overwhelming orange light brought acute awareness to the fact that we were two women, naked and drunk on a rooftop for all the world to see. Her body was so beautiful but I spent most of that time staring at her laugh lines. Abruptly, she sat up and lit a cigarette, before studying me intently. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I feel like Woody Allen."
I started out life as an introvert and ended up as an extrovert. The change was miraculous.
I grew up in a family of immigrants. We thought we were better than everybody else. My father was a big man. He worked hard. He died when I was young. I was merged with my mother. I spent my life trying to get away from her. Then I took care of her for 5 years before she died.
In college I did political Guerrilla Theater. I played a Vietnamese peasant woman with a baby. I fell down dead in the faculty cafeteria.
I went to hear Ram Das speak in Berkeley, California in 1969 when he had just returned from India and it completely changed my life.
I find myself dancing whenever and wherever I can.
The first time I stood at the edge of the ocean, the water rushing back into the sea around my feet made it feel as though I was running backwards though my feet were completely still. I fell over.
I remember trying to eat a baloney sandwich while sitting on a blanket, but we were at the beach, and the sandwich was full of . . . sand.
At 19 I stared at the ocean’s vastness and decided, just like that, I didn’t need my big sad problems anymore, that they were tiny enough to disappear in all those waves. That same summer I learned from my mother and aunties that they thought peeing in the ocean was quite acceptable and normal. I was shocked and disgusted.
I remember sitting on a rock jetty letting the water bash my legs into the rock, wondering whether it could turn them into a mermaid's tail. Or back into a mermaid’s tail.
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THANK YOU to these contributors:
Lottie Sweeney
Louise Vignaux
Stacey Murphy
Susan Lesser
Yvonne Fisher
Zee Zahava
Zeffi Walsh
