Warm Recollection #2
More from the Bitz files...
As introduced here, these Warm Recollection posts are random cullings from thirty years of note files…
Progression of ages:
In your twenties or early thirties, if you suddenly decide to get wholesome and make jam or chutney, like the grown-up you aspire to be, you’re all about the jars being new and consistent, and making fancy labels for them… but once you’ve finished you quickly forget about the whole enterprise and most of it never gets eaten.
In your fifties you don’t care about the outside. You use a mix of whatever second-hand jars are at hand and scrawl the date on a stick-on label. You’re mentally marking the stuff inside (which will actually get eaten this time, and taste a lot better than the earlier attempts, as a result of longer experience and the haphazard skill that comes with age). The surface becomes unimportant and invisible. It’s what’s inside.
The same is probably true of our interactions with people.
Not sure I believe in coherent people or personalities. Maybe we’re a collection of rooms — things that have happened to us, along with aspirations, habits, characteristics, dreams, some of them contradictory. And who you “are” is the space in between: a spirit that wanders this house, dipping in and out of all those “you”.
Some people are like Great American Novels: it’s all good stuff, but there’s an awful lot of it. Others are more like executive summaries, and you have to fill the rest in yourself.
Comes an age when you read novels and you can tell very quickly that the person writing about a married couple in their forties is neither in their forties nor married.
Essence of childhood — a ball stuck up in a tree. Essence of adulthood — that stuck ball being more obvious when seen in winter, from the window of a house you own, and have to maintain. All the balls of childhood are still up in those trees, and their effects may get more visible as the seasons pass, and the years go by.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
When I was little my grandmother sent postcards to her sister who lived 10km away. Now I’m telling this via text from a phone in Australia to a FAMOUS author who lives in America. 😉
"All the balls of childhood are still up in those trees" Hmm. I do like that.