Sonder is a word which defines the idea that everyone we
encounter in life are leading lives as vivid and as complex as our own; lives
populated by visions and hopes and friends and the inherent agency of love and
lovers and families and dreams and desires. Pondering this while looking back on
what you know of your own mother’s life is fraught with its own problems. Do we
ever really know our parents or our children? Or indeed that of our friends and lovers? And yet it’s hard to escape the influence and impact they had and continue to have on our lives. Its with this in mind that I ponder the life of this young woman, pictured left. Born in 1933 and so I reckon this must have been taken around 1950-ish, sitting on the cusp between teen and womanhood. Before she was married, before I was born, because she was 21 and I was a honeymoon baby - 9 months and a day after their wedding. Such memories I hold of her, and yet this period reveals nothing except the joy of the moment - I'm reading a pony and candy floss. It could be Portobello and the beach, or equally the miner's gala or some other such fair. But she looks happy and I remember this look from my own childhood. Its nice to reflect. It
is said Harry Houdini grew up as a witness to his own father’s failings, a man
who was always haunted by the shadow of his own past. Yet evading that past was
probably Houdini’s greatest escape, as he guided himself into the culture of the
new world that had left his father so disappointed. We all escape our own pasts to some degree because we all move on - and its what we want for our own children, is it not? I suspect Houdini's father would have been proud of his boy. One of the things that has helped me to move on is music, which I have a passion for. And today we can grab this out of the ether. Take a moment and listen - I have tried in vain to translate it, but does it really need that because its just lovely. Take time to sonder about the people in your life.
Sonder is a word which defines the idea that everyone we
encounter in life are leading lives as vivid and as complex as our own; lives
populated by visions and hopes and friends and the inherent agency of love and
lovers and families and dreams and desires. Pondering this while looking back on
what you know of your own mother’s life is fraught with its own problems. Do we
ever really know our parents or our children? Or indeed that of our friends and lovers? And yet it’s hard to escape the influence and impact they had and continue to have on our lives. Its with this in mind that I ponder the life of this young woman, pictured left. Born in 1933 and so I reckon this must have been taken around 1950-ish, sitting on the cusp between teen and womanhood. Before she was married, before I was born, because she was 21 and I was a honeymoon baby - 9 months and a day after their wedding. Such memories I hold of her, and yet this period reveals nothing except the joy of the moment - I'm reading a pony and candy floss. It could be Portobello and the beach, or equally the miner's gala or some other such fair. But she looks happy and I remember this look from my own childhood. Its nice to reflect. It
is said Harry Houdini grew up as a witness to his own father’s failings, a man
who was always haunted by the shadow of his own past. Yet evading that past was
probably Houdini’s greatest escape, as he guided himself into the culture of the
new world that had left his father so disappointed. We all escape our own pasts to some degree because we all move on - and its what we want for our own children, is it not? I suspect Houdini's father would have been proud of his boy. One of the things that has helped me to move on is music, which I have a passion for. And today we can grab this out of the ether. Take a moment and listen - I have tried in vain to translate it, but does it really need that because its just lovely. Take time to sonder about the people in your life.
