“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”
– Aristotle
I’m always amazed at how memory shows up in the creative process. This photo (circa 1975) had been lost to me for decades. I recently found it and was surprised how the visual of the mountains resonates in the words from a short story I wrote just a few years ago: Mitch looked into the…
This photo haunts me. This is my father in his late twenties doing two things he loved—boating and smoking. The photo was taken somewhere in Southeastern Virginia when I was just nine or ten years old. The nicotine inside that pipe would kill him several years later. But it’s the expression that haunts me. Is…
Memorial Day, 19-something. Flags, barbeques, sparklers, red-white-and-blue dresses. Smiles. I am a typical white American girl who grew up in a typical American household, sometimes lower and sometimes middle-class, in a typical southern-ish town. I didn’t understand the privilege I had. I didn’t understand how others were denied that same privilege. I didn’t understand hunger…
