hello hello from a desk positioned in the sunniest corner of a mostly unfurnished apartment.
the moving process is slow. we’re bringing most of our stuff over later this week, right now the rooms are filled with little more than the echoes of my typing.
one of the reasons for the snail's pace is the walls. when we moved in, we realized they were covered in bright white spots of patch paint. the walls are a light grey. it was comical how bad they looked, not to mention the fact that we didn’t seem to notice when we toured the place, because we were so excited about its potential.
painting became the priority. someone came over and gave us a quote. he pointed a laser device at every wall and told me he could do it two weeks from now for $1,450. ever a thrifty gal, I wanted to think of another way. a friend came over and surveyed the abstract patches and dropped a bit of genius, why don’t you ask the landlord for the paint color and patch it yourself?
that’s when all the synapses fired and I remembered seeing an old can of paint in the corner of the property storage space. as soon as my friend left, I ventured Nancy Drew Style into the dark corner of the storage. I dusted off said empty bucket, revealing the sharpie inscription: WALL PAINT.
fast forward 24 hours and I was clutching a brand new gallon of Velvet Grey 20, ready to work some miracles. if I can use Magic Healing Brush in Photoshop, I could probably do it IRL.
using a technique my Dad taught me called feathering, I carefully painted over the paint. you gently roll near the spot, to create an thin aura of wet grey. when the roller lands on the spot you press harder, allowing more grey to coat the unwanted splotch.
when I finished, it was exactly like a successful photoshop. you couldn’t detect where my paint ended and the old paint began. everything was clear and smooth and one.
it was both eerie and peaceful. it reminded me of our memories.
over time their edges get fuzzy, slowly the how’s and why’s start to lose their shape. the visuals and volumes fade.
eventually the times and places flatten out and sometimes the very core dissolves. a flat landscape is left in the memory bank.
awareness and mindfulness practices can play a big role here–memories can be kept alive by the lack of conscious thought. we’ve all allowed the mind to run the show and visit whichever memory palace it wants to, like a bossy tourist with too many sights on their list. every time a memory is revisited, two things happen:
it activates the emotions that are tied to it, the body relives the experience
the memory itself changes
so the body is having the same physical reaction and the memory is shifting, completely unaware of its impact.
this isn’t an eternal sunshine thing, I can’t explain how to magically erase an ex.
but I will say, the less that memory is visited, the less power you give it.
THIS IS NOT EASY. I am not perfect at this. at all. because our memories are inherently important to us. we had to develop them to survive and remember that putting our head in the giant animal’s mouth is a bad idea ete, etc.
but it’s nice to know that we are not powerless over our memories.
when we attach our entire Self to our memories, it makes the process of letting go very difficult. often when I talk about forgetting, people say that they are afraid of losing themselves. we cannot lose ourselves, only the narrative that has built up around us. truthfully, our greatest essence is not defined by our memories.
the more we practice observing the moment before us, the less we will feel attached to passing phenomena.
even when we travel back to grasp the past, memories are fluid and change between our fingertips. every time we revisit a memory, the memory has to go through a new storage process. new information can be added, pieces can fall away. some scientists say our memory recall is only 50% accurate.
memories are teenagers living rent free in our head. they don’t care if you check up on them and they will have a different hairstyle every time you enter their room.
what's in front of you right now is the only thing that is fully real.
all we really have is this moment and the infinity that exists within it.
when you live with this intention, the things that are important take shape.
the rest will begin to fade away, like velvet grey into velvet grey.
and you don’t miss them, because your vision is much more clear.
I’ll see you on Friday with a Meditation Prompt for paying subscribers. this week, we’ll go through the practice of staying in the moment.
if you’d like to join click here:
as always, our Moments for Now Dispatch drops on Sunday.
if you’d like to submit a photo or short written piece of your moment, email: momentsfornow@gmail.com -- everything is shared anonymously.
until next time,
James