Comments on: You Were on the Porch

By: Paige

Paige — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:20:52 +0000

Those forts were AWESOME!!! Minus the funky orange/gold carpeting that was scratchy…. Remember when we got too big to sleep there? (Either that or Willie got too obese and took all the room…) I was soooooooo mad!! But then we upgraded and made them in our bunkbeds in our bedroom in SLP… which was cool until the heat came on and made it 1000 degrees in the lower bunk… best memory tho? When we would have carnivals “for two”!!! We would buy and sell each others crap!!! Heh heh- good times.

I have a small number of memories while in diapers. You’re right: you really just don’t want to remember that era, for a number of reasons….

By: Molly

Molly — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:07:47 +0000

It is definitely fascinating to think about the way one’s memories are constructed! Nicely done.

I have one memory of wearing diapers, and it was from the day I decided I didn’t want to wear them anymore. I remember walking toward my mom, with a diaper pantload, and thinking, essentially, “This sucks. I think I’m done with this.” And after that I think I was.

Yes, tenth grade was a big year for me. Just kidding! Ew.

By: tony

tony — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:17:27 +0000

It is reality, in its way. But then, that’s what proof is.

This post is fantastic. The earliest I’d been able to muster, in years past, was walking down the stairs in the early years of elementary school (these stairs are probably about 3′ tall, but they’re a substantial descent in the memory). I’ve never had anything to push me to remember like this, though.

By: dahd

dahd — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:01:27 +0000

My photographer friends and I used to joke, if you didn’t have a photograph of it, it didn’t really happen.
Perhaps a photograph isn’t proof.
It is reality itself.

By: jeff laux

jeff laux — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:34:48 +0000

It’s an interesting idea you’re getting at: that with the “personal” media ubiquity of our times, even our earliest, most formative memories are really maybe only early memories of the snapshot, or video grab — the souvenir — of the act itself.

Now, where’s that Susan Sontag when you need her?

(Oh, yeah.) Now, I remember. And thanks for nothing, on that account, Annie Leibowitz!

By: dahd

dahd — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:23:30 +0000

I remember that day well. The rain fell hard and vertical, so none blew in through the screens. I loved sitting on the porch during rain storms, protected, yet vulnerable. My memory is you were about 4 years old. Do you have memories in B&W, reconstructed from Tri-X on Ilford paper, displacing reality, the unintended consequence of a photographer/father?