Pleasure and Memory

"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmān, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The séroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it."

~Hyoi in "Out of the Silent Planet" by C. S. Lewis

Writing and Memory

Today in my classroom, an amazing thing happened. Something I would like myself and my students to remember. After it happened, I had my students write about it. I told them that when I was in fourth grade, my teacher had us journal every day; and much of what I remember from my childhood is from that year... simply because I wrote it down. I told them to write it to themselves as if they are writing what they want to remember years from now.

A year and few weeks ago, I had decided to start blogging. (Or at least writing in my Notes some of my experiences and thoughts.) I love to write; it helps me think, feel, believe and solidify my own experience. Then, The Sad overcame me. When The Sad overcame me, I stopped writing. Not only did I stop writing, but I deleted several bloggish Notes I had written. *shame on me. it's like burning the books in which my own life lives*

Isn't it funny how sometimes your own advice comes back to ring true for yourself? Something happened today that I don't want to forget. How can I expect fourth graders to do what I haven't done myself?

So, I will write. I am not sure if/when/how to share. But I suppose the first thing is to put the fingers to the keyboard...

:-)