Memoirous

Escaping the heat in the 2800 block of W. Augusta, 1988. Photo by Michael Fryer (Vintage Tribune Chicago, IL) Here is another Facebook group I’ve discovered. Simply Pictures of Chicago —such as over the weekend, tone of pics of the electrical storm Saturday and Sunday evening. A lot of sunset shots. Just everyday stuff. Crowds at the beach. Michigan Avenue. A hot dog stand. This is the ESSENCE of flash. An Instagram moment that is here now and a minute late gone. And, if you, me, we don’t grab it then it will forever be a regret. Because the light changes, the clouds, move, or something else comes along and that moment is lost. That’s why I’ve been enjoying Stephen Spender’s poetry. This one from, Collected Poems 1928 – 1985 , Stephen Spender An Air Raid Across the Bay at Plymouth   Above the whispering sea And waiting rocks of black coast, Across the bay, the serchlight beams Swing and swing back across the sky. Their ends fuse in a cone of light ...

Lollapollution from July 2014 I just got done with Lollapalooza this weekend and am exhausted. BUT, before you think I am some hip rock’n’roll mama, let me clarify: I was on a clean up crew. Actually Saturday started out like any other weekend—a little bit of relaxing and a little bit of catching up. I was just taking a pie out of the oven when some people staying in our building said they needed 3 more people to fill out a clean up crew for Lollapalooza. I asked how much they were paying and thought they said $10 an hour, which sounded about right. The shift was 2 pm until midnight. I wasn’t doing anything else that couldn’t be done Sunday, so within ten minutes I was in the back of a van and being shuttled downtown. It felt a little bit like human trafficking—though I haven’t had any first-hand experience (up to this point, I mean.) We were escorted quickly through a staff gate and wristbanded. The guys in the grey shirts were our bosses and they divided us up into crews...

https://www.facebook.com/CHOIRCHOIRCHOIRCHOIR/ Something Happens When We Sing Together from communion to communion from Sunday to Sunday there have been shootings massacres unspeakable violence from the breaking of bread from the breaking of bones to the spilling of blood to the spilling of wine we are lost in despair without hope without answers from one week from one month to the next nothing ever changes—and yet something happens when we sing together

At this blog (Memoirous--about memories) I’ve mentioned in the past certain blogs or websites that can help to spark flashes. Right now I’m onto Forgotten Chicago and Abandoned Spaces. I signed up for notifications so whenever there is a new post it shows up in my feed. Which is all Facebook gobbely-gook. What I mean to say is I love the pictures and they motivate me to flash and write about memories. Abandoned Spaces viscerally calls up nostalgic curiosity. I am always intrigued by the various spaces, once inhabited but now abandoned and the various relics left behind.  Abandoned Spaces The abandoned Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire, England Sometimes it is a shoe store still warehousing and displaying styles from the 60s, sometimes it is a schoolroom from Chernobyl with decaying textbooks fertilizing a tree growing up between broken desks. Who isn’t fascinated by ruins? They call to us, remind us that we are all mortal, that nothing stays the same, but will eventua...

You don’t realize how much of real life is squeezed into a Disney animated film. Life, Animated is a new documentary out by Roger Ross Williams about Owen Suskind a young man with Autism obsessed with Disney animated classics. Throughout the film Suskind and his father quotes lines from the movies that directly relate or are pertinent to Owen’s life: the fears, the highs, the lows. Even Owen himself sees parallels, how things always look worse before they get better, how the bad guy is all part of the hero’s journey, the necessary role of the sidekick. Owen’s life could be a Disney classic. For someone who needs the help of social cues, these movies become tools for Owen to navigate his life. As a 3-year-old Owen suddenly lost speech and retreated into a world of his own. A room without doors. His parents with the help of therapists and teacher searched for inroads, but ran into roadblocks. UNTIL one day, once upon a time, they discovered Owen repeating some lines from ...