Socks, memories, etc.
Just a quick update on the socks: now in the home stretch. The all over lace cuff will take the longest, but I am going away for the weekend to hang out with some old friends I haven’t seen in a while at their place in the Jersey suburbs. Much of it expected to be spent lazing around, watching a movie and chatting and arguing about politics, so I am hoping to have these done by Sunday.
Actually these socks will have good memories associated with them. The first one was knit last week mostly chatting and wandering around the city (including during a jazz concert at the Lenox Lounge!) with an old friend of mine who was visiting from India for a conference, and who I hadn’t met for over six years. Isn’t it lovely that projects have memories associated with them? Some bad, true, but it’s wonderful when they’re good.
Sort of unrelated: a friend and I were talking the other day about how we forget the plots of mystery novels and this allows us to reread old mysteries without losing the suspense value. She quoted parts of a poem by Billy Collins:
Memory
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
My research explores the making of historical memories (and much of it I would like to forget!), but this take on memory, of the joy of rediscovering well-loved books anew, is delightful, no?