I have a need to try and capture feelings or scenes. It's why I write.
Last night I went up to the attic to tuck my daughter into her four poster bed. I turned off the lamp and then sat on the edge of her bed talking to her for a minute. She was cozied in under the blanket and comforter with her cat at her side and an open book. Her reading lamp clamps to the bed frame and shone over her shoulder. The cold weather is more noticible in the attic, but she has an electric blanket and a cat, and she likes the privacy of the attic.
"Can I finish my chapter?" she asked, just as she asks every night.
"Yes. Turn out your reading light when you're done."
She nodded. She is a beautiful child - thick wavy red hair on the pillow, creamy white skin with freckles across her nose, a smile that looks as if she is happy, but also smirking, which suggests an intelligence that doesn't always go with such beauty. I kissed her on the forehead and went back downstairs.
As I went down the stairs I felt an overwhleming desire to remember this moment in this child and this house and I knew that I would write about it this morning and that I would be unable to truly capture the moment. Because reading words and listening to music and looking at art are all experiences, but they are not the exact experience that the artist tries to capture and preserve. But we're all compelled to do it. I remember looking at the parents videotaping their child walking into kindergarten and laughing to myself that by recording the moment they were trying to preserve that feeling that kids give you - that your throat is trying to come out of your mouth and you love this little being so much that you don't even know who you are anymore.
So yeah. I felt that way last night when I said good night to my Mary.
Last night I went up to the attic to tuck my daughter into her four poster bed. I turned off the lamp and then sat on the edge of her bed talking to her for a minute. She was cozied in under the blanket and comforter with her cat at her side and an open book. Her reading lamp clamps to the bed frame and shone over her shoulder. The cold weather is more noticible in the attic, but she has an electric blanket and a cat, and she likes the privacy of the attic.
"Can I finish my chapter?" she asked, just as she asks every night.
"Yes. Turn out your reading light when you're done."
She nodded. She is a beautiful child - thick wavy red hair on the pillow, creamy white skin with freckles across her nose, a smile that looks as if she is happy, but also smirking, which suggests an intelligence that doesn't always go with such beauty. I kissed her on the forehead and went back downstairs.
As I went down the stairs I felt an overwhleming desire to remember this moment in this child and this house and I knew that I would write about it this morning and that I would be unable to truly capture the moment. Because reading words and listening to music and looking at art are all experiences, but they are not the exact experience that the artist tries to capture and preserve. But we're all compelled to do it. I remember looking at the parents videotaping their child walking into kindergarten and laughing to myself that by recording the moment they were trying to preserve that feeling that kids give you - that your throat is trying to come out of your mouth and you love this little being so much that you don't even know who you are anymore.
So yeah. I felt that way last night when I said good night to my Mary.
posted by Lea at 4:41 AM
1 Comments:
I have the same need, Lea. To capture what I am feeling or thinking about when I experience something moving. I do that alot with mix mucic recordings. Each song is a moment in my life, of what I was feeling when I heard it, or where I was and why I liked it.
Me
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