Last Week’s Links

In preparing this post for publication, I realize that all these pieces revolve around remembrance.

On the Intoxicating Power of Forgetting Where You Came From

In this excerpt from the book A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past, author Lewis Hyde “explores the egoism of memory and self-making.” Hyde tells an anecdote about Larry Rosenberg, a teacher from the Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massa­chusetts, visiting the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a preserved building much like the one Rosenberg grew up in. What most caught my eye was this:

Rosenberg told this story in the context of a talk about a distinction he draws from Buddhist teaching between “real time” and “psychological time.” With real time, we do not dwell on (or dwell in) the past or the future but simply note them (saying, “I grew up in New York” or “When I retire I’m going to Florida,” and so on). With psychological time, on the other hand, past and future take over the present; we live in them, identifying with their pleasures and pains. As the Bud­dhists say, we “make self” out of them (as I might make self out of my pride in publishing a book or my shame over having flunked a chemistry exam).

This distinction between these two kinds of time describes the difference between mere facts, such as date of birth, and those experiences that we incorporate into our life story, the narrative of personal events we build up over time to help us make sense of the world and our unique place in it.

Where Are All the Books About Menopause?

Having undergone a hysterectomy at age 44, Sarah Manguso ponders how “For women, aging is framed as a series of losses—of fertility, of sexuality, of beauty. But it can be a liberation, too.”

The Clarks Originals You Didn’t Even Know You Needed (Until Now)

This is not an advertisement from me (although it is an endorsement from Esquire) but rather a reminiscence. 

Do you remember Clark Wallabees?

First debuted in 1967, the Wallabee has more than a half-century of history behind it. Originally based on a German-designed moccasin, the style didn’t catch on in Clarks’ native Britain initially. But it enjoyed success in North America, and it was a runaway hit in Jamaica. See, Jamaican “rude boys” had already adopted the desert boot—which was launched in 1950—as part of their de facto uniform, and the associated criminal activity made the footwear a target for police. When Wallees came onto the scene, they were immediately brought into the fold.

The article goes on to explain that Wallabees became popular in the U.S. because of “the influx of Jamaican immigrants to New York in the ’80s.”

I bought my Wallabees in the early 1970s, on a trip to San Francisco. I had to learn not to tie them tightly, like sneakers, but more loosely to allow for the shoes’ lower fit on the foot. Once I learned that trick, I wore them all around San Francisco (although I did not wear accompanying flowers in my hair) and for a long time afterwards. 

I hadn’t thought about Wallabees for a long time. What a pleasant surprise to see them recommended as an acceptable fashion accessory for young adult males.

Apollo 11 at 50: Space program transfixed Americans, changed pop culture

UPI asserts that humans’ first walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969, was the culmination of a craze that since 1961 “had influenced pop culture — entertainment, architecture, fashion, consumer goods and language.”

Words linked to space were everywhere, with American space explorers called astronauts and the Russian counterparts called cosmonauts. People found ways to use “liftoff,” “launch” and “rendezvous” for purposes other than space talk. And phrases “space cadet,” “it’s not rocket science” and “spaced out” became commonplace.

The article goes on to list how the space craze’s influence showed up in all kinds of ways: toys, candy, cars, television, movies, music, fashion, architecture, Disney World (Florida). In Houston, where the astronauts trained, the baseball team the Colt 45s was renamed the Astros. They soon had a new indoor home, the Astrodome, which opened in 1962.

The moon landing was “a demonstration of what the human species could achieve,” but in the next five to six years the “feel-good moments were gone,” replaced by “the 1-2 punch of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.”

How about you?

Do you remember Clark Wallabees, the moon landing, the Astrodome, or menopause?

© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown