#memo

Now we wake up with our memory and fix our gazes on that which was; whispering sweetness, which once coursed through us, sits silently beside us with loosened hair ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#memory #love

I remembered during puberty, through the anorexic mists of intermittent menstrual cycles, that man, my father, lifting Shirley's nightdress over her head and asking her in his mocking way to choose what colour condom she wanted. 'Red or yellow?' Which did she choose? I can't remember. Perhaps she alternated. Perhaps there were other colours. It didn't happen once. It happened again and again. I had no power to stop it. That man, my father, had some control over me. I was drugged by the black silence in that big house, the vile whiff of aftershave, the crushing torment of inevitability. My father fucked Shirley using red or yellow condoms and it was those condoms that brought it all to an end. It was my last realization of the day; any more would have been too much to contemplate. That time when my mother had found used condoms in bedroom, he had admitted, after a pointless burst my father's of denial, that he had been going to prostitutes. That was no doubt true but I can't imagine clients take used condoms away with them; prostitutes would surely get rid of the things. No. My father kept those used condoms as a prize. He was fucking his fourteen-year-old-daughter. He was proud of it. Rebecca welled up with tears. Poor thing, she kept saying. Poor thing. ↗

— Alice Jamieson

#child-abuse #child-rape #child-sexual-abuse #condoms #dissociation

Bricks without straw are more easily made than imagination without memories. ↗

— Lord Dunsany

#imagination #memories #writing #imagination

There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did know I had consumed a large amount of alcohol. But I must have done something crazier than just being found drunk to have a nurse sitting by my bed. I thought it would be a good idea to say something and planned it for several seconds. 'She's all right,' I said. 'Who is?' asked the nurse. 'Alice. I'm all right now.' As I spoke I wondered if I had said something wrong. didn't sound like me. There were so many voices muttering in the background it was hard to tell. ↗

— Alice Jamieson

#confusion #dissociation #dissociative #dissociative-identity-disorder #fragmented

...We never set eyes on Fatima or our dog or the city we had known ever again. Like a body prematurely buried, unmourned withpot coffin or ceremony, our hasty untidy exit from Jerusalem was no way to have said goodbye to our home, our country and all that we knew and loved. ↗

— Ghada Karmi

#love

Reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. ↗

— Robert Penn Warren

#memory #men

...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum... ↗

— John Geddes

#eulogy #maudlin #muse #slum #streets

Katniss. I remember about the bread. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#memory #mockingjay #peeta #remember

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#pain #remember

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#truth #wishes #bad