Friday, June 2, 2017

Things I Don't Want to Forget

Meadow Trail, May 2017

The young man with glasses and neat short pants who sat next to me in the cafe window and slowly drank his espresso and small glass of water, without a sound, his phone resting untouched on the counter before him.

Seeing my mom's handwriting inside a small note card with a gold pineapple embossed on the front.

The taste of a warm foil-wrapped burrito eaten in a meadow after a hike.

The afternoon there was a fleeting soft space between my apartment and the sandwich shop, where bracing wind ceased, sun shone, and street sounds were muted.

The translucent green of the cresting wave I knew I couldn't capture with my phone.

The way I slice an apple.

The morning we sat at a picnic table and ate an entire loaf of Brickmaiden's Pain au gros Sel (salted potato) as an impromptu breakfast.

The day all of the old men I saw in North Beach had Grandpa John's eyes.

12 comments:

  1. Perfection. Plain and simple. Thank you for sharing these moments with us.

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  2. By describing these moments and images, you've shared what you've seen and what it evoked. And herein rests the beauty and the magic: You've created an image (different yet related) in my brain, triggered another set of reactions (different, again, but related). Each reader conjures their own version of a young, bespectacled man in neat shorts, so now there are four different men, sitting at different cafe windows, sipping in silence. This is where the camera fails and the pen excels, in this multiplying effect that I think is kinda cool. So with each new reader comes another man, and on it goes until this blog page its populated with contemplative, phone-abstaining men, which makes me smile.

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  3. I like your perspective, Rachael. Thinking of this multiplying effect is definitely cool, and now you've added another dimension. Thanks!

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  4. Ah, yes, the underside of a breaking wave when the sunlight quickens in its curve. I have the color fixed in my memory, too, but it fades with use. It makes me ache sometimes because I live so far from the sea I once called home.

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    1. I do enjoy being near the sea. You live in Chicago now, right? Where did you live when you lived by the sea?

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  5. Haven't visited you in a while. Love your writing Denise. Hope you're well.

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    1. Hi Magda. So nice to see you visiting. Thank you. I am well and hope you are too.

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