I was listening to Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father again today, and I started to realize how all of his values have been shaped.
The messages of his campaign are quite similar to the life lessons he wrote about throughout that memoir; his beliefs as contrasted with those of Malcolm X and the ideas imparted to him by father, grandfather, mother, half-sister and workmates. And that makes me think… what will we see in retrospect?
I really want to write my dad’s memoir. I don’t know how, but that is what I want to do. Even if it’s crappy, terrible writing and the book is short and there is nothing of real interest in it, I believe that his life needs to be put down – if not by himself, then by me.
I want to do that, in fact, with my own life as well. And my life as related to Heathy’s. And whatever happens to me in the future. I am a habitual note taker, list maker and plan shaker [ah, rhyme] and I actually do want to know all the gorey details once I’ve passed the threshold of “youth” and moved into “adulthood.”
But for right now I don’t know what that means.
I am being shaped, am not yet shapen. I am as a form in wax [though Hermia may deny] with leave to be figured and disfigured as suits the whims of others. I will be disappointed, I will feel loneliness – and they will shape me. Obviously, the reverse is also true.
So for right now I will live my life, make some note on the fact that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is opening tonight and I’m still throat sick but muscling through. I will recount my experiences in a character’s body [Hermia] and will write down all the trials and tribulations which feel so necessary at the moment. I will find myself in the cracks between pages so that, when you put it all together, I will become whole. Like a mosaic or a house of cards, because youth is both fragile and beautiful and I want to grasp every minute of it.
No matter what, I am going to take the time out of my busy hours on Earth to record this story.
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