Memorandums

Musings, missives and other writings from the desk of Katia Jean Paul.                                                                                                                                                                                @2022 Katia Jean Paul                

[meamemoranda]

N° 13 - Untitled

The problem with a house this big is that you can never find her.

Try as you may, she always finds a novel place to hide. Last you went looking for her, hours had gone by before you found her in the children's playroom. You never suspected she would be there. The children are not children anymore after all. You stopped to take in the photos of the children hanging on the wall, their toothy smiles filling your heart with pride and a feeling that threatened to nearly have it burst right there inside your chest. Just then, she rose from her hiding place in the playpen behind you. “Boo,” she said softly as she parted the bed of multicolored balls she had just laid underneath, gasping for air–just a little. She flashes a toothy smile, same as theirs and you breathe a sigh of relief.

The next time she vanishes, you find her nestled behind the banquette in the sunroom. She mistook a piece of lint for a spider and has been on the floor ever since, she tells you, in a brown study, looking out the adjacent window at the expanse of green and the shrubbery and the trees.

She seldom comes looking for you. Seldom moves heaven and earth to find you in this big house. Sometimes, she'll exit the office, and ask the children absent-mindedly, “Have you seen your father?” The children will blurt out that you are in a room she will invariably not find you in, and she gives up looking as soon as she realizes the children have led her astray.

The day is gusty and windy and she has gone hiding again. You have tried the solarium, the dining room as well as the study. She is nowhere to be found. You try something new: you stop looking. Busy yourself with dinner. Chopping and slicing onions and garlic. Watching the stew bubbling on the stove, and before long, she follows the scent wafting in the air like a trail of pebbles through a deep, dark forest, finding her way back to hearth and home. She flashes a wide smile, wraps her arms around the children though they swiftly wiggle out of her embrace, and you feel your heart fill with happiness.

You do not begrudge these long absences. You do not begrudge the distance between you and her. To have her is to never quite know where it is she goes off to for hours on end. Even whilst the house is empty. Even as she sits next to you. In a daze.

This time, you find her quicker than you ever have. She sits on the floor to the bedroom you share, rifling through old photographs. “Remember the weekend we spent up at Lee's cabin?” she says as she holds up a picture of the two of you on the dock before a glinty body of water. Two faces young as the day is long. You had found her easily then. She had been hiding in plain sight. – KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 12 - Pray for Jackie

Jackie did not want my money. 

I had culled $1.50 from the change compartment of my wallet and tried handing it to her along with a $10 bill only she protested and took away the collection cup herethofore between her legs. Initially, when she shook her cup and asked–very nicely may I add–whether I had any change to spare as I walked past, I said that I did not have any money at all. This was a lie of course for I had just withdrawn $60 at the till at the drugstore up the street while buying some last-minute travel essentials. I said what I said out of habit, I suppose, for I seldom carried any money, let alone change. But I would be remiss if I did not admit fear of scarcity, or the perception thereof, has me invariably keeping a tight grip on my purse strings. After putting aside $50 for cab fare for the ride to the airport, I had $11.50 to spare. Still, I said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t got any money.”

“It’s OK,” Jackie replied. “Here’s what you can do instead:” She looked downward and tapped both of her knees. “When you get home, you can get down on these, and pray for me.”

I panicked. She said “...pray for me,” and panic set in. “Let me see if I have anything,” I said insistently. I rummaged my wallet and gathered $11.50 for Jackie. “Oh, looks like I've got a little something after all.” $11.50 was easier to part with than engaging in the act of prayer. Despite the number of times I had prayed up to this point, prayer remained foreign to me. Largely because I did not believe it ever amounted to anything, nothing but words mouthed quietly and expectantly into the void above the stars only to fall on deaf ears. I panicked because to pray for Jackie was far too grave a responsibility. I did not want to fail Jackie. But Jackie did not want my money no matter how much I insisted, bent down to drop the folded $10 bill and change in her paper cup as onlookers observed our lively pas de deux­.

“Please, take it, I insist.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. Pray for me, it would make me much happier.”

Jackie shook her head, clenched her legs together, and buried her head in her knees in protest. Finally, I acquiesced, but not quite. “Are you sure?” I asked. Really, I wanted to know, Are you sure you want me to do this? Are you certain you wish to leave your faith in my hands? She cracked open a crimson bible, flipped furiously through it, turned it over and pointed to the verse she wanted me to read.

Wisdom.

“Do you know what wisdom is?”

“It’s part of the New testament, right?” I stuttered, embarrassed that I did not know.

Jackie grimaced a sort of endearing grimace as though I were a child who had said something silly. She brought her hands together as in prayer, and bowed. “Wisdom is this.

“Just read Wisdom when you pray for me. It would make me very happy!”

“OK, I will.”

“Oh, I am so happy!” She clapped her hands, ebullient like a child. So easy to please.

I waved Jackie goodbye and walked away. I thought about Jackie as I made my way up the hill to the apartment some 20 minutes and a little more than 1km removed from her. I wondered why she did not take my $11.50 despite sitting on a slab of concrete begging for change by the entrance to the supermarket with ostensibly nothing to eat. And nowhere to sleep but the slab of concrete. I thought about my looming deadline. Ten days to the day I would be gone for good, a one-way ticket to a place I had never gone. What was left of my worldly possessions strewn across a small patch of the living room floor. I wondered: would I have enough money and resolve to stay the course?

That evening, I undressed, wrapped my body in a plush bathrobe, knelt before the sky, pitch black save for a spattering of bright, glinting stars outside my window. I cracked open my tattered, dog-eared bible and began.

“Dear God, look after Jackie. Promise me. And let Wisdom be my guide.” – KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 11 - Two Truths (and Counting) and Not Too Many Lies: August in Review

Choices made in haste and in fear become inexorable regrets.

Some regrets are more palatable than others.

There is but one cure for decision fatigue – narrow your choices. Make the pool infinitely smaller and decision-making becomes all the more simple.

The perfect accompaniment to a toothsome meal is someone blathering on over your shoulder.

The concept of good and evil is not a matter of extremes­, but rather degrees. One good deed does not make one virtuous anymore than one wrongful act make one wicked to the bone.

The reckoning is over. The world has gone back to the way things were as though there is not a grievous imbalance in the world. Meanwhile, a man is caught on video body slamming his pet dog to the ground, and condemnation–and justice–is swift. The killers of human beings whose right to freedom and dignity is too often questioned roam free long after their victims have been lowered into the ground.  It took a pandemic to stir protest–momentarily–against the other. We may eventually find a vaccine for the former, but we will never cure the latter. Power and privilege remain too good a hand to hold. Equality for all; not so much.

Willful indifference is bliss.

Self-awareness is a plague.

Blithe is the fool who reads the room through fog-colored glasses. All the while, the room seethes.

Gentrification is colonization by another name.

Strength and vulnerability are bosom buddies–especially for those among us who must invariably fend for ourselves.

Objects in rearview are uglier than they appear. Buyer's remorse.

The present moves at a snail's pace.

The present is real. The past and future are mere illusions.

There is a clear relationship between age and marriage.

Resilience is a boisterous, conspicuous act.

He said, “Baby steps, babygirl. Baby steps.”

Addendum. There is a woman outside my window. Every day, she sits for hours on end on the doorsill out on her balcony and stares blankly into the courtyard. No libation or cigarette in hand. Undeterred by the changing seasons. The cold in the air. The nippy feeling. She is the only one out on the balcony at any given time. Rare are the days she fails to appear. Always at her post as though she were summoned there. By whom, no one knows. Steady is her gaze. So is the frisson traveling up your spine when you meet her eyes in the distance. Yes, she is watching you.– KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 10 - This Pussycat Is Majestic

The rain beats against the windowpane. Raindrops splatter on to her nape and shoulders. She rushes to close the window before the smooth line of the wooden headboard becomes frayed under the weight of Her mounting tears–she who has breathe all of us into this unknown like mist. 

She stretches her limbs pulled tight; wriggles her tired bones. How long have I been sitting here? she wonders. She exits the room for a reprieve. When she does, she meets her on the other side of the door. Watches her lying outstretched on the dusty floor, one paw resting daintily atop the other like a blue blood and shouts, “You look ridiculous; this isn’t the Ritz-Carlton!” She doesn't actually shout this; she rolls her eyes and wishes she would have the mean streak to shout these words or an equally scathing remark. Instead, she stares on nonplussed.

The cat remains aloof. Does not move from the throne she has erected right there in the middle of the hallway. Silly girl, hurry past you cantankerous fool, she seems to intone with her dismissive gaze. She thinks the woman a contemptuous pleb and the woman wishes to knock her off her throne.

She does this often. Lie atop tables and chairs like a noblewoman languid upon her chaise longue. Self-importance and drowsiness in her eyes. She’s in need of a good bath and a vigorous brushing to match her airs. The woman is not her owner nor is this country hostel her abode. But as she looks at her now, she realizes that the haughty feline with whom she roams these bedraggled halls could be transplanted to a place befitting of her airs and not know the difference. In that moment, the woman is wide-eyed with realization. Majesty and poise lives not where the tables and chairs have gilded trimmings. A dusty, cobwebbed palace makes no difference to one who knows one’s true worth. Of all things, the cat has taught the woman humility.

This pussycat is majestic. - KJP

[meamemoranda]

N°9-Two Truths (and Counting) and One Too Many Lies: The Week in Review

A liar, even a compulsive one, lets the truth slip at some point, the impulse to speak with candor greater than the adrenaline rush that comes with fibbing. A liar, especially a compulsive one, knows better than to make this same mistake twice.

The year of our Lord 2020 is not a complete wash.

Dust bunnies are good for the soul.  

The uncovering and public shaming of the physical embodiment of entitlement over land and sea–and everyone in between–otherwise known as “Karen”, along with the cartoonish, meme-able depictions of her villainous, nefarious ways will finally lay bare the insidious prevalence of systemic racism in all nooks and crannies of society­–from its gleaming ivory towers of academia and industry down to the places of commerce, service, and communion–especially by those who clutch their pearls at such depravity and see no wrongdoing in the more covert and equally damaging, oft fatal ways they wield privilege–and the power it yields–like a cudgel against the very persons they claim to love, champion, admire and respect.

Nature is grossly underrated.

Individualism rears its ugly head when calamity ensnares us all. Epidemiologists offer clear, definite mitigating measures yet the overwhelming response, as evidenced by the overt flouting of a practice that may just save us all, is “each man for himself.” A multiplayer tragedy. On one side, there are those who stand to gain from this mass rebellion. On the other, those who will pay with their lives. In the middle, the mindless co-conspirators unwittingly doing the former’s bidding. Mask wearers are “sheeple”, anti-maskers like flat earthers. The history books of the future, if not whitewashed like those of the past, will make for an enthralling read.

A mask is no match for the male gaze.

Your eyelashes grow long like tentacles. Your brows remain bereft of plumule.

This shit is bananas.

Okonkwo meets such an uncharacteristic, anticlimactic demise after all Things Fall Apart.

Your mind remembers all of life's embarrassments and disappointments with sharp precision while good memories are hazy at best.

Kreyòl ayisyen sounds like a gaggle of little girls gathered for a game of Double Dutch, the star jumper, her heart skipping a beat whenever she rises above the turning ropes meeting at her feet. Hearty, innocent laughter unspooling happiness through her toothy smile onto the Crayola-scribbled concrete. Rhythmic, melodic, upbeat, playful. That, I remember. Skipping, and skipping my fancy footwork until swiftly defeated by the quick flogging of the turning jump ropes descending on heretofore zippy feet...

Kevin, they're coming for you next.  - KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 8 - Stillness

Clouds like cotton candy pepper the cerulean expanse above the swaying apple tree. Its branches, bristling with verdant green leaves, dance in the wind. Birds chirping near and far. Children play, their gurgled laughter and screams trailing off in the distance. Women whisper while they hang freshly laundered linen on the clothesline. The courtyard awash in resplendent sunlight. The apple tree whistles a sweet lullaby as you rest your eyes on an ordinary summer's day. The world outside your window is stillness. - KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 7 - Patience

Arguably not a virtue one acquires with ease. The world presses us to get this shiny new thing–now. Get on this booming new trend–now. Seize this opportunity–now. Don't wait. Or it'll be too late. 

Still, amid the noise, there is another chorus. Not as loud or boastful, but a worthy counterpoint. It is the plea of those who rhapsodize about patience. Deferring gratification. Staying put and holding out for the appropriate amount of space to house all of the things you wish to acquire. Sitting this opportunity out for the right one. Living ascetically now to live indulgently later. Waiting for the storm to pass. For the nightmares to cease. Waiting it out. Rather, riding it out. Instead of seeking quick fixes. And doing so with all the stoicism you can muster. While you wait, when waiting does not come as easily as most other things, you must sit in great discomfort. Settle into it, whatever “it” is as you would a plush armchair–you will be here for a while. Patience is daunting precisely because time–that very fleeting resource–appears to flash before your eyes. One year ago, you were younger. One year goes by in a flash when, back when you were too young to entertain the notion of meeting your inevitable demise, the days used to drag their feet. Before long, you have completed three laps around the Sun, in what seems like the span of only one year, each one knocking the wind out of you with the strength of ten men (partly because you have not kept up with your exercise regimen!) Time flies, really, when you get on with it, and you don't know why it seems as though it gets away from you much faster than it used to. All the while, it manages to feel, much like before, as though it still only inches along slowly like a tortoise. There is much more time ahead of you. How will you take care of all the minutes, hours, weeks, months, days?  Or will they take care of themselves?

Patience is a tricky enterprise. You may wait too long and die before you enjoy the fruits of your labor. Or one can reason that you'll die anyways, so might as well wait. You may toil for a better day while the other shrugs–“enjoy your life now, it's all downhill from here, anyways.” Either way, time passes, whatever choice you make.

I am the last person one would describe as patient. And yet, I have had a lifetime of waiting–at times foisted upon me by circumstances beyond my control, at other times, self-imposed–to build my fortitude. The waiting game is an arduous one. One that tests your mettle while the world dangles shiny new things before you like a carrot as you plod up the steep hill. Trusting that in good time, the things that must be, will be. And invariably, they are.

Patience, I have come to learn, is a worthy adversary. And an unlikely ally. - KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 6 - Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not.

Blackness...

...Is not a ball and chain. Far from it. Racism is the encumbrance.– KJP

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/racism-terrible-blackness-not/613039/.

[meamemoranda]

N° 5 - Home

The boxes that we live in–aren't they terribly inadequate? 

No matter the amount of taste we impress upon them–or lack thereof–with renovations and embellishments, the result is the same. A home that is nirvana to one is anathema to another. It can always be improved upon, in some minute or monumental way–and even then, it always falls short by one or another's estimation. Is home a feeling then? How the box makes you feel whilst you seek refuge within its walls? Do you feel safe? Do you feel at ease or are you at attention? Do you feel as though someone, or something is watching you from the corner of the room? That thing is not the cat, I assure you. The cat is busy licking its bottom.

I have felt at home in many boxes. I have had many boxes to call my own. Not all boxes are created equal. I have dreamt of expansive homes whenever I spent the better part of my time running in circles in a tiny apartment only to retreat, time and time again, to the same room or two in the bigger boxes I have had the pleasure to luxuriate in. The same corner of the settee, flanking the corridor kitchen where I bore a hole deep to match my love of that particular spot upon the plush sofa, curling up to read, write, and think aloud, silently. The loft bedroom with the vast window overlooking the canal running under the boardwalk to the entrance of the building–and all the equally wide windows into the neighbors’ boxes from which television screens shone bright, illuminating the night sky like a kaleidoscopic tableau of constellations. The glass desk in the corner of the sitting room, tucked neatly below a string of shelved books garlanded with cobwebs in the Irish cottage in the city. The sofa by the record player spinning Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and the other throwbacks to another era where hair defied gravity all of the time and everyday life was–for the most part–a gleaming affair... I seemingly don't know what to do about too much space once I have it. And grow steadily insane when space is lacking–though there is much less dusting to do. Much less looking over your shoulder.

The boxes are becoming smaller and smaller, prohibitively expensive as everyone crowds around the same city centres, vying for a piece of the concentration of precious real estate within these dense patches of land. Save for the functional and uber-aesthetically pleasing micro-apartments and tiny homes springing up in European and Australian cities, they're also getting uglier. Defaced by neglect or indifference or both in a seller's market where cash is king. Demand trumping supply. What's the bother? Let's split one box into three slivers, and have at it. One will take the living room. The other, set up house in the kitchen. 'Tis all normal. Commonplace. Farther afield you go, you will have none of the shiny appendages of city living but all the quiet, and bucolic charm in the world. Apple trees and tomato beds. One neighbor, a short drive away. A rather nice box with a roof and a porch. Does this sound like nirvana? Or one more box to confine oneself in?

Keep your box the same. Start anew. Give it away. No matter its size and trimmings or lack thereof, home is (complete this sentence) where the ____ is. Whatever ____ is for you. Choose the box which best houses the life and by extension the memories you wish to create.–KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 4 - Making a Fool of Myself

How many times have you made a fool of yourself this lifetime?

I have more times than I can count. I do wish I were being hyperbolic. Let's see...There was the time I was almost hit by a bright yellow school bus as I crossed the street, oblivious. The driver, quick on the pedal, likely bleating expletives at me judging by the deep furrow of his brow once I realized what I had done–or failed to do–and looked past my shoulder over at him. The laughing children on the bus as well as the ones peering from across the school yard were not nearly enough to wake me out of reverie. It took a maligning teacher, and a disapproving classmate to point out to me the error of my ways. The hefty price I nearly paid for my carelessness. Having me realize I'd nearly died. I was young enough to never entertain the thought. Of dying that is. Then there was the time I fell face forward onto the uniform, manicured grass in front of school after awkwardly climbing over a fence–in a bid to prove wrong a band of young boys who'd wagered I was too girly and not nimble enough to succeed at the Herculean feat. Then, there was the time I spilled a Martini all over myself in a crowded upmarket bar during happy hour after some absent minded patron shoved me whilst burrowing his way out of the tightly-packed crowd of suits and other natty revellers. Frankly, I was angrier with the drink than the man who'd helped shower me with it. Why do they insist on serving Martinis in such an awkward glass anyway? Not the least bit user-friendly. Anything in a Martini, Margarita, even a coupe glass is an embarrassment waiting in the wings for its time to strike much like an eager understudy waits with bated breath for the lead star to take a mysterious tumble down the stairs. That is, if she doesn’t help her along. A relatively recent addition to my wall of shame–imagine insulting, rather than ingratiating a suitor whose interest you wish to reciprocate. Each sentence out of your mouth, meant to compliment, twisted by social gracelessness into a painful case of foot-in-mouth, exemplar of a great lack of self-awareness never before seen, to be sure. Not catching the words quickly enough before they unspool in the expanse of air between the two of you. “How do you mean?” they ask, befuddled. It's too late. You have made a mess of things. This, after the security guard at the Tate gives you a booming earful in a room full of museums goers for nearly using the wrong 'entrance' to the interactive installation. Whilst scanning the room, you failed to see the entrance was 'over there'. Your foot still dangling above the roped installation of sand as your face becomes flushed with embarrassment whilst you try to hide it. You do a poor job of it, of course.

There was a time embarrassments were too heavy a burden to carry. I would want nothing more than to seek refuge from the laughter, the pointing and the stares in a deep, dark cave and never come out to be rid of the feeling. With age comes this great revolt at the gnawing pang of embarrassment–there is not nearly enough time to worry about the fool I have made of myself. I have bigger fish to fry. My body may have taken an awkward tumble down this busy thoroughfare but my ego is far from bruised–anymore.

The embarrassments belong to the past­–and with it, one can argue they disappear from one's rearview and after some time, become no more than faint, distant memories. Mere illusions. A point of note­–embarrassments take shape in the process of doing, rather than merely being. And that in itself makes these embarrassments–whether one or many come to pass–worthwhile. To do rather than not to do (and wondering why you did not do once it is definitively too late to do anything at all). The choice seems all too obvious.– KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 3 - Love?

Anyone can garner love from others. Despite, sometimes, not loving themselves a whole lot.

All it takes is a few people, gathered on the stoop. Or the sidewalk. Belting out that ersthwhile trademarked song on the day you are afforded yet another year. On this planet both beautiful and ignominious. A surprise box of saccharine sweets. Well wishes from the other side of the screen. During quarantine. And like that, you are loved. You feel all the love there is to feel. No matter how messy, how imperfect you are.

Is everyone deserving of love? Is there such a thing as being too messy, too imperfect, to garner love from others? Does imperfection reach an invisible ceiling before it is too much–and the person who harbors such imperfection, relegated to a life sans love?

And what of monsters? Do monsters deserve love? Those whose imperfection is beyond the pale. Those who are broken beyond repair. Those who hurt and maim in unspeakable ways. Only to turn around and smother you with 'love'. Those that try to be good (What is good? Who is good?) for a little while, give you what you ask for though it comes unnaturally. Is meant to appease you, temporarily. Still, someone loves them. And so surely, there is love for everyone. Enough to go around, and then some. Some love monsters of their own free will. Choose the monster above others far less dastardly. The fruit of his loins. Of her womb.

Can love be learned? Practiced until made perfect? Performative love. Love emulated from the movies. Or love, taking the cues of those around us who do love so well. Effortlessly?  

Is love latent? Like a skill, does it lay dormant until such time something (someone) brings it to the fore? And you discover you have been good at it all along?

Can love be something that is never felt? Can one not know what love is?

“Life is love,” a woman once professed to me. “To be is to love,” she opined “That is the point of it all.” Are you, then, not alive if you have never loved? Do you cease to exist until (unless) you are loved?

Love,

Love,

Love,

The tyranny of love. Cruel to those who have loved. And those who have not. - KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 2 - How Are You? “Tired.”

“The root of the white man's hatred is terror, a bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. But the root of the black man's hatred is rage, and he does not so much hate white men as simply want them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his children's way.” ― James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

Not even a deadly virus that threatens to upend our lives forever, usher in a new normal never before seen, trace a hard line–between then and now, and all that it entails for our future and that of our children–never to be crossed again, can expunge the spread of this abomination. The scourge that is anti-Blackness. There is always time and resources and energy and zeal to enact acts of degeneracy in the name of white supremacy. Maintaining a system predicated on the pillaging, thieving, usurping and dehumanizing of another requires one's constant knee–literally and figuratively–on the neck of the “other”, like prey, fearing that in its absence, one's own legitimacy would somehow come to be erased. What is a thief without its loot–and the spoils of war colonization? Decades ago, James Badwin rightfully and astutely opined, “What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a 'nigger' in the first place, because I'm not a nigger. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it.” A people, of which I proudly belong to asks not for supremacy, not for retribution, not for tit for tat, but simply, put simply, to be left alone to go about doing that most human and underrated and worthwhile of endeavours: living. – KJP

[meamemoranda]

N° 1 - Staying Put. Getting Away.

Self-isolation. Just as it gnaws at the lively tendons of the bon vivant, it is equally merciless on the recluse....

All of a sudden, I feel an impulse to wade into the world in ways I have never done before, all because I am told that, for now, it is not possible at all. Self-imposed isolation breeds mental fortitude in times like these. State-mandated isolation in the time of something not quite but possibly just as fatal as cholera breeds...minutes upon minutes spent cogitating about all manner of things, not least, death. A newfound proclivity for bucket listing. An uptick in the perusal of DIY tutorials for stitching together your very own dining banquette–far trendier, and superior, aesthetically, to the peninsula.  Online window shopping. Cooking more in one week than you have in one lifetime. Indulging in the second cardinal sin, spoonfuls to ravenous lips. Taunting the cat–and paying with the bloody, darkened scratches on your hands. Reading four, sometimes five books at a time. Getting the storylines jumbled in your head. Successfully getting through 'Insanity'–the warmup. Five weeks into the program. Fortunately, one abdominal, and then another, still manages to shred its way out of tenacious belly folds. Amazing!

The list of ruminations is long. Time moves slower these days, and that is a mercy. There is plenty of time to think. To be mindful. To be grateful. To change course. To start anew. Or to do nothing at all if your heart so desires.

Wanderlust. Is ever greater when even homebodying loses its heretofore, majestic appeal. Looking through old travel photographs makes for a great, hassle-free sojourn to another place, though it is difficult imagining getting away without getting away. I find myself fixated on certain photos, forgetting exactly where and when I was when these were taken. Having trouble remembering what it is that I was doing. What was I feeling? Come to think of it, is it really our bodies, or rather our minds that do the traipsing through meandering roads?  What does this say about the mind? Can we trust it­–and our memories–at all?  

Thankfully, if memories of old voyages slip away quietly, opportunity for creating new ones abound. Consider a walk around the block, where trendy, unusual houses flank older, more traditional homes, often awkwardly sticking out of everyday vistas much like the Spire of Dublin, that architectural anomaly erected in Dublin City Centre. It's incredibly strange. There is one such modern home in my neighborhood. A tall, slender, multi-level aberration akin to a shipment container with large windows overlooking rows upon rows of squat, standard houses. The spiffy new kid on the block turning up its nose at the old hats while enjoying the downmarket land on which it sits–tall and gorgeous and the envy of all of its admirers. The Google street views of Mont Blanc and other natural marvels of the world are as good as the real thing. Almost. Get to bucket listing must-see destinations for when we are permitted to flood airport terminals again and knee each other's very fancy reclining plane seats for the long haul flight to Paris. One thing is for certain: the logistics won't be the same. Neither will the whole of the experience from departure to arrival. And thereafter.

Addendum. Speaking of homes, and staying indoors, why is to be house-proud negatively perceived? House-proud: attentive to, or preoccupied with, the care and appearance of one's home. “I used to tease her about being so house-proud.” The dictionary's example sentence drives home this point. Before this new normal, Lysol was an afterthought, if at all. Many learned–in earnest–how to wash their hands (frightening). 'Tis better to be house-proud than not at all, no? Self-isolation is less imposing that way.

Something else that gets a bad rap, unfairly: Quiet. Noise is a pollutant, is it not? How is your hearing these days? City living does come at a cost, and sure, in some respects, it is par for the course to be able to indulge in the heady experiential buffet only the city can serve up from day to night, but what of the din we can obliterate with our own savvy doing? The blaring of the TV. The base trembling beneath the floorboards. Our own maddening voices shrieking about nothing. So many ills could be abated by even a modest dose of silence. Even while hearing your own thoughts, and all the ugly realizations that it entails, crisp and clear as day. – KJP