“Memory, in short, is engraved not merely by the life we have led but by the life of the mind…by all the lives we so nearly led but missed by an inch, and—if we grant enough leeway to the imagination—by the lives of others, which can cut into ours every bit as sharply as our own experience.” – Anthony Lane, writing about W.G. Sebald in The New Yorker (May 29, 2000)
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Monthly Archives: September 2011
Tell me a story—about war
“While you were out last night, I saw a piece of paper, and it was very sad. And then it blew away,” my three-year-old reported the week before last. At first, I was not quite alarmed but certainly taken aback—how … Continue reading
When you open a door—night visions with Kafka or Beckett
My older son started a new school in May. This was a difficult decision, changing schools so late in the year, but one we made quite deliberately in navigating the New York City school system and the emerging needs of … Continue reading
The memory keepers: Remembering September 11th—and World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10th
My thoughts this weekend, along with much of America and many around the world, are on 9/11, remembering, mourning, thinking about what happened ten years ago and what has happened since. Two wars, much grieving, many shifts, small and large, … Continue reading
Posted in Memory, Motherhood, Suicide, War, Writing & Reading
Tagged 9/11, Aaron Fein, children, depression, Edwidge Danticat, grief, literature, suicide, White Flags, World Suicide Prevention Day
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Addendum: War, suicide, aggression—hope (a gay politician, a veteran, and a president)
When I finally saw the film Milk earlier this summer, afterwards my thoughts kept returning to the stress placed on hope in the story, seemingly in a starkly different context from that of Iraq war veteran Brad Eifert (see my … Continue reading