Author Archives: Christene

Time

Time can become meaningless once you realize that while it moves forward your life moves in a circle, always repeating events, but never fully recapturing what once was. What is now is always a simulacrum of the past. Even your memories will reflect this when you realize you can’t quite remember – not exactly, and not enough to distinguish between the past and present.

Your memories changes with time. You are always remembering the same event, but as time shifts so does the memory. How is that possible? How can an event, which has happened already, change? It doesn’t, but it does. The event, the physical manifestation of what occurred is fixed. Your memory however, dependent upon your interpretation of the event, changes. At different points in time the significance of an isolated moment, a memory, shifts, and that is what you remember. It is your interpretation of that moment that gives it meaning, and as your perspective changes, the moment becomes redefined.

What happens when multiple people remember the same event? Even when they agree on the actions that occurred, they will still see it differently. They each viewed it from a different angle. Does this mean that each perspective becomes a different fragment of the same event, or that the event itself becomes replicated to accommodate multiple facets?

And what happens when a memory belongs to only one person, and they can no longer remember? As they completely forget, if no one else witnessed or knew about the event, does that somehow void the action from the universe? This is kind of a different take on the “if a tree falls but no one hears it” question, except I am not questioning whether the tree made a noise when it fell. I want to know if the tree fell at all.

A lady in her kitchen moves a kettle from the counter onto a shelf, an event so un-noteworthy (like so many others) that she never tells anyone of it (why would she?). One day she dies, thus the memory absolutely no longer exists, with her, or anyone else. Did the kettle ever move?

You get older, but that doesn’t mean time travels in only one direction; as the days pass you find it is Monday again, December again, and always again. It all is as it once was, except slightly off. And all of the memories you accumulate play in a loop on repeat serving as the soundtrack while you mime out your life, striking a different pose each time the same song comes on as if you have never heard it before because each time it sounds so different you cannot recognize it. Years have passed, and you have come full circle, ready for another round.

 

Under Pressure

Procrastination is a skill.

Application deadlines for doctoral appications are right around now. Mine all passed. I am not taking any classes at the moment so I didn’t have any papers due, but if I did, they would be due around now as well.

I turned in all of my applications weeks ago, and if I had papers, they would have been completed at some point in late October. That is just how I operate.

Some of my friends are still in school and applying for various forms of grad programs. They are in a tizzy, panicking over deadlines, and up at all hours submitting things last minute. Some have papers due in less than a week which they haven’t started, and have not even found a topic for.

And they will be just fine. This is how they operate. There is something to be said for the person who can write a fifteen page paper with less than thirty six hours left and still perform, receive good grades and somehow do it all.

Sometimes I envy these people who can put things off until last minute but still accomplish everything they set out to do. I have never been that way. If I were in their position at this point I would freeze up, unable to do anything.

I have always been in the mentality of “what if something came up last minute?” Then where would I be? What if something comes up at work and I have to work later (even later) than usual? What if one of my children gets sick or injured and I have to spend the few days before a deadline at a hospital? Can I bank on anyone else giving a damn about my personal problems and extending a deadline?

Last summer, right in the middle of finals when my father was in the hospital had I not written all of my papers well in advance I am pretty sure my GPA would have suffered significantly. Several months before that when my son was extremely sick I would not have been able to get multiple things done, for school or work. In the back of my head I am paralyzed with the fear of “what if.”

Others are free from this, and don’t seem to worry about what may happen. They function believing that they will simply write their papers the night(s) before, and all will be well. This is not to say it takes me longer to work on mine, but that I am more cautious about the process.

I work better when I believe I have all the time in the world. Introduce a looming deadline and all of a sudden I become illiterate. Tell me I have to produce something in a matter of hours and you will get little more out of me than a blank stare. This is why I am so terrified of standardized tests. I know I don’t work well with these types of restrictions, and it takes every ounce out of me to overcome my deathly fear in order to perform.

But is it real? I have been so afraid of risking everything that I have not actually tried it. If I were to try and procrastinate, would it really be the end of the world? Or would I somehow just do it? Is there some switch inside of me that would flip on and allow me to do as well as I can with stringent time constraints? Can I write my papers the week before?

I don’t know. Procrastination is a skill. That I don’t have.

 

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Soup and Memories

I had soup like my grandmother used to make. It is an odd Romanian soup that I have found others don’t care for, so I have never inflicted it upon anyone else. My children won’t even eat it. They stare at the strange orange liquid with “floaty things” and immediately become suspicious. Ally asks why there are apples in her soup. There are no apples, but the little red quartered potatoes with their skin still on resemble apples. My grandmother used to include pig’s feet, or chicken feet. We didn’t eat them, but she insisted they added flavor. I don’t put them in. I also leave out the ingredients I have either forgotten (to be exact, I didn’t forget the ingredients, but simply what they were called, and can’t look them up), or the ingredients I have never been able to find. So the soup is only a replica of the one I grew up with but it still brings back childhood memories.

My grandmother used to starch everything. She loved starching clothes, sheets, table linens and everything else, and then ironed them into perfect forms. The days when we would wash the sheets were my least favorite as it would take several nights of restlessness to get them soft enough to make the bed comfortable. The table cloth was a pristine white, slightly embroidered, and of course, starched. It would collect crumbs from our bread, and small spills of orange liquid. She would make the soup in the wintertime. Around now in Romania it would begin to snow, the air was as crisp as our table cloth, and we would eat lunch (at around 4 p.m.), of soup, and warm bread with butter. My grandparents and aunt would also have a small glass of vodka. I have never tasted vodka like that again. I used to be allowed small sips from my grandmother. I was only about four, so I would simply dip my tongue into her glass for a taste. Nothing was off limits. Whatever the adults would taste or drink I was allowed to try. I thought it was disgusting. In fact, all of the things the adults had (alcohol, coffee, cigarettes) were disgusting. I figured if that is what adulthood did to your tastebuds, well then, no thank you. But I was curious, and always tried.

Every winter I remember the cold days of soup and vodka. The taste haunts me, but I will never be able to recreate it. I don’t know if my memory has skewed the taste, or if these things simply don’t exist anymore. I don’t make the soup with all the original ingredients, and where am I supposed to find authentic Romanian vodka?

I guess it is strange that I remember some things and not others. I have the most odd memories of my childhood, glimpses of events and everyday things which seemed so innocuous at the time, but have somehow formed my perception of that time. And the older I get the more I want to go back and find those memories again.

And then I wonder what my children will remember. What strange habits of mine will they take with them into adulthood? What everyday events will leave imprints into their memories?