Dear M—
While talking on the phone the other day, you told me about the dirt roads in Alabama where you grew up. That the roads in my pictures reminded you of your childhood. I paused, not because I didn’t want to talk about it, but I suddenly felt endeared to your memory. I let your memory sink in to my present. We shared poetry for a few breaths.
From what I remember in my childhood visits to Alabama, the most vivid pictures that come alive are those long stretches of highway slicing though a landscape cottoned with trees. I remember the tall green puffiness of the countryside. That, coupled with the memory of the teenage me driving long stretches of interstate between Connecticut and Massachusetts, the surefire memory of it all is green. All of it lush and verdant. Where the verdant resides there is life and vibrancy. Where there is life there is love. Many years have passed since then, and it’s tucked beneath layers of happenings. But ever since then, green and I have always been kindred.
You ask me what it was like. It’s all still shrouded in haze, overexposed film in overlapping timelapse snippets. It’s not that I can’t come up with words to describe it, it’s that they don’t seem like enough. I wish memory could materialize so you could see it for yourself. I wish feeling could emblazon itself on your air so you could breath it in and let it course through your blood and veins. Any words I offer are as brief as these pictures.
But I can also boil it down to a feeling that I didn’t think I really had in me, not to this degree. This is a picture of a place where I relearned to love.
