One Lake, Infinity
A walk around Green Lake, Seattle
Dear Kindred Spirits,
I’ve always been a walker. When I was little I walked to school. As I got older, my walks lengthened and became an entire world, separate from my chaotic home life. Whether I lived with my grandparents, my single mom, or my mom and stepdad (after she remarried when I was thirteen), I always walked, and I always needed to escape.
Sidewalks, along with my Walkman or small radio or tape player, were my refuge. My first tapes were MC Hammer, Phil Collins, and mix of 70’s rock & roll classics, featuring songs like “Low Rider” and “Carry on Wayward Son.”
Before the Walkman I had a Pocket Rocker, which came with several tiny tapes with only one song on each side. Debbie Gibson, Belinda Carlisle, and Whitney Houston serenaded me in my lonely loops around the playground at recess. I flipped the tapes again and again, devouring each song, parsing out the different melodies and meanings, imagining myself living in their worlds, where I was heartbroken, with possibility.
As a child and teenager walking was an escape, but in my adult life walking grounds me. It feeds my yearning for solitude and company. I walk alone, yet I exchange smiles or glances with others. I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and music, depending on my mood. Now that I’m not escaping anything my walks have become balanced, nourishing, and connective.
Today I walked from my house to Green Lake, where there’s a large walking path (one-way for covid safety). I couldn’t settle on a podcast, so listened to music instead. First Jaime by Brittany Howard, followed by El Camaron De La Isla (Son Tus Ojos Dos Estrellas), which reminds me of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I cycled through more music while also stopping to take pictures of the water.
Am I the only person who is fascinated by the sunlight on water? The way it winks and glitters and dances? I took pictures and videos of that; I always want to capture the ephemeral. Today I stared at the water, mesmerized by its surface tension and the physics of its separation from air. A soft breeze rippled its surface and I let my eyes relax, not looking directly at anything; simply absorbing the colors, glimmers, and shapes.
I love how each wave appears to arch up towards the sunlight, as if trying to capture that glimmer for a tiny moment. Each wave falls, dies, is reborn. We’re like that, too, though we forget. In each moment we are cresting towards something, capturing something, releasing. Breathing in and exhaling.
On my way home, I switched from music to a podcast. On Being is one of my favorites, though I haven’t listened in a while. I settled on an interview with artist Dario Robleto. He spoke, amongst other things, about how people remain alive in our memories.
I thought of my mother, as I always do when I think of death. Of how she is still alive in everything I do, not just in my DNA, but in my memories- I carry her with me. Her face and body, her laugh, the things I wish she could have done. My grandmother and grandfather, too. The ones I knew. I carry their scents and cigarette smoke and voices. They are not truly dead, and our relationships continue to transform as long as I am alive.
Am I the only one who remembers the pile of magazines my grandmother kept on the left arm of the tobacco-yellowed sofa, next to where she always sat? During the evenings, when my grandpa watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy at full volume, she’d rifle through each magazine, meticulously snipping out pictures she’d later glue to blank cards and mail to her relatives and friends. She was known for her dedication to correspondence and terrible, barely legible handwriting.
In retrospect it’s clear that she always had someone in mind while searching the magazines. After I moved back in with my mother I got cards and letters from her, always decorated with zebras, my favorite animal. I cherished and kept them and reread them frequently.
I am also known for my correspondence, and maybe this newsletter is an extension of that. Maybe I want to decorate each letter I write and fill it with nourishing, sustaining words for you, my readers.
My memory of this keeps my grandmother alive in this world. When I am gone, those parts of her may disappear, too. But part of me knows that nothing truly disappears.
On the podcast David Robleto said, “Love survives the death of cells” and my cells inhaled and several tiny waves crested and reflected the sun.
Love survives the death of cells. Who is gone, yet still here? What comfort is it to know we carry the ones we love so much with us, without even knowing it? That they survive in our thoughts and hearts?
Water is always reflecting light. I remind myself of this. Water is never without reflection. As I walked, I found myself looking for the glittering things, the shiny, obvious things, like I often do.
The subtle things, also beautiful, are suffused with light; mutable gradations of color and shade. Leaves reflect, rippling slightly on the surface of the lake, rays shining onto the medallion floor, exposing its depth. Patches of black where the leaves gather close together, inhibiting sunlight.
Do leaves carry the memory of the leaves that came before them? When they bud in the spring can they feels the ghosts of the crimson and canary leaves that detached and left bare branches? Do they sigh in remembrance, and bloom?
A long walk is cleansing. Something about movement. About absorption and reflection. The world moves through me. If someone were to look at me from far enough above, would I glimmer? Be one minuscule wink of a glimmer, along with everyone else? Together, do we make something larger and significant? Alone, are we only a flash of light?
Something about movement.
With love,
Anastasia