Why Rememories?

Why my collection of musings are in honor of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved

Welcome to my musings! Pull up a chair, pour yourself a nice cuppa and let’s get acquainted.

Ever since I first read Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, as a tenacious but awkward kid, I wanted to write my own novel entitled Rememories. While that is still a foggy dream in a far away land, there are definitely too many thoughts jumbling and bumbling around in my head that need a safe space to land. So welcome, dear reader, to my safe space; my island oasis of short stories, thoughts, snippets of the magic and madness that lives in my head.

First, an excerpt:

“I was talking about time. It’s so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place — the picture of it — stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. right in the place where it happened.”
“Can other people see it?” asked Denver.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it’s you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It’s when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. Where I was before I came here, that place is real. it’s never going away. Even if the whole farm — every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what’s more, if you go there — you who never was there — if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you.”¹

As a preteen, I was absolutely enthralled with the magical idea that a memory was just living out in the world, waiting for someone to bump into it on the quantum field. I had fantastical stories in my head about how terrible it would be to bump into the ‘wrong’ rememory; how absolutely delightful it would be to walk into a royal rememory, or a salacious one.

The double entendre of rereading it in college solidified for me how truly magical words, stories and memories really are. Through Beloved, Toni Morrison created her rememory for us all to bump into. Her artfully woven picture that will never die, for it lives in all our minds and on many of our bookshelves.

Over time (hopefully under some semblance of a schedule), I will be sharing my own rememories with you. Maybe someday one of the many stories I have will end up on your bookshelf as well, and not just living in this quantum realm.

Enjoy.

1. Morrison, Toni. "Beloved." Penguin Books, First Plume Printing, September, 1988, pp 35-6.