Ways To Be Well; Volume 2 - July
The magic of memory, a 25 min yoga session, a summer meditation, book recommendations, early bird bookings for a September Day Retreat & for June 2024 Cornwall Retreat & lots more....
The Magic of Memory………
July is a month of layered memories, when the veil between experience and remembering is at its thinnest. We remember summers less as outlined happenings and more as a blur of summers past, a weighty collection of moments that lose their definition but retain their feel.
Of all the months that take up residence in the bank of our memories, I suspect July -for those of us who follow the sun of the Northern hemisphere at least- takes up the most space.
It is a heady time of stretched days, of frothy gardens, of a spring that has already gone to seed. It includes ends of terms and the memories of them- with last exam elations and deflations, those scribbled shirts and the cramming of a whole year into overstuffed rucksacks. All those final weeks, when teachers’ energies and authorities are waning, and the sniff of childish rebellion is stifled with the bribe of the loosening of regiment and the treat of films.
It is a time too of holidays. Long days at home defined by a boredom that our adult selves now miss, covet even. And the weeks away. Begun with cars boots packed to the rafters, frazzle-edged parents at the wheel and a fight with a sibling within the first ten minutes almost guaranteed. There are the holidays back to places that we have always been, places that have been turned sepia by the weight of our nostalgia. Or the memories of the new, their necessary novelty and otherness of smell and light leaving a more technicolour imprint.
In some ways memory is a mysterious thing. How is it that smells can conjure up a past moment with the insistence but also the seeming magic of a rabbit pulled from a hat? How does the order of things get muddled, with certain things looming far larger than others? How does time itself become a trickery- with some memories stretching it and others seemingly passing in a flash? How do some memories merge, others get shared, and most never wholly match up?
I once went to a Grayson Perry exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, where all manner of his work- tapestries, mind maps and ceramics were on display.