Writing and Photography by Jeff E. Brown

It’s about the accumulation. Of memories, experiences, stuff. And it’s also about how you reckon with all of that. How you process and react to the weight of it and what questions you don’t dare ask yourself along the way.

Most people I know don’t just wear blinders-they purposely distort their memories of traumas to the point that they don’t weigh them down. They are emptied of the truth because to wake up and move on sometimes our subconscious takes the most hurtful bits and hides them away. It is self-protection at the deepest level and I can’t think of too many people who even realize that they do it. And that is normal.

People who dwell on things inevitably wind up mired in darkness and they aren’t the ones who are long for this world. People like you and I live a long life. We’re here now, after all? Doesn’t mean I’m right about everything. There’s no chance of that. But it says to me to me that I’ve managed to absorb the disappointments and bleak periods and still find something to hold onto. It’s mostly intangible, but if I had to pick a word, I suppose I’d go with “yearning.” But even after eighty-two years, I’ve never figured out what I am yearning for and perhaps that is a good thing. It might just be the whole point.

© 2021 Jeff E. Brown. All rights reserved.