Jeunesse

November 24, 2022 (Thanksgiving Day)

It’s no secret that this has been a very trying year for me. It started with my mom’s passing last January; now, I have Covid. As I write, today is Thanksgiving, which has no meaning for me except in memories. I have a rich life when I think about my past, and I have been in the Past industry this year. I finished co-writing a screenplay based on my memoir TOSH, and I think I’m about to start another co-write on another script based on someone else’s past. The present is collecting bits and pieces of one’s past and making it new again. I firmly believe in recycling, including images from my childhood and onward.

As I write, the marble bust of Jeunesse is in front of me. She belonged to my parents since the early 1950s, and my mom had Jeunesse in her home for decades. It is probably my most prized possession and is 100% marble. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Jeunesse looks like my mom. The name Jeunesse means youth. When I stare into her eyes, I feel the energy of the statue’s bust sense of youthfulness. I recall looking at my mom while visiting her some years back, first noticing the aging in her face and thinking of Jeunesse just a few feet away from her. My memory freezes, and even now, when I think of my mom, I think of her at a younger age. When I have dreams of her, she is in her 30s. In my thoughts, she is never an aged woman but someone who is only twenty years older than me, and I’m the child, of course. Youth is essential for those who are young and others who think of life when they were young’un.

I’m one of those who are aware of their presence, and I often think about how long I have been here. If not literary on that spot, but on the Earth to value such an experience. Jeunesse is marble, but if she were alive, she would have witnessed the ones I love with great detailed information. And that brings sadness because I can’t obtain that information nor ask questions that can be answered. This is both the awkwardness of death and the sorrow it brings. What I remember the most about thanksgiving dinner is the conversations we didn’t have. A strange combination of admiring the dishes in front of us and the awkwardness of things not stated or, in some cases, not understood.

Due to my health, I’m mainly staying under the bed covers and focusing on the cracks in the ceiling, and discovering how far the imagination can go. I travel far.