Shiny Floors and Marshmallow Clouds

Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait
MoMA January 26, 2018

I’m painfully hyperaware of time passing. So much so it makes me nauseous, lose sleep, silently panic as I gnaw on the inside of my lower lip. My version of nail biting. What’s yours? 

But I’m also so in the moment that I forget to pee or look at the clock. I can spend hours deep in real talk, not small talk, face-to-face and heart-to-heart with a person I’ve just met or someone I’ve known in this lifetime and the last. That makes me just like you. We all have anxieties and fears and we remember embarrassments and highs and lows. And when we allow ourselves to remember we all have unfavorable moments, maybe we’re also allowing ourselves to focus on the pretty sky moments sewn into our hearts with thread so tight and deep we can’t possibly cut the seams. The memories so ingrained in us that they become who we are.

When my mind goes to a memory, I first remember the lighting. It’s like a small flicker and the film starts blurry and silent while slowly adjusting its focus, getting as bright or dark as the space it holds in my head. The 4 PM light sneaking in through the southern sliding door brightens glossy wood kitchen floor. The floors are slightly scratched from counter stools and dented from tumbling block castles. They’re always clean because your mom used old cotton t-shirts kept in a bin in the garage to scrub the floors. She did that a lot, it seems. Kids are sticky and splatters on the floor quickly morph from liquid dots to specks covered in dirt, dust, and sock fuzz. I don’t immediately remember dirty fuzzy floor spots in these memories, but I know they formed near the refrigerator and by the sink and garbage can. Juice splashes or condiment drips. Mom keeps the floors spotless and she has a closet in the kitchen that holds another world of colorful construction paper and plastic drawers labeled “crayons” “markers” “tape” and “stickers” She encourages us to open and explore and use the collected items. The kitchen leads into the dark emerald green carpeted living room and it felt like a place of possibility. There was space in front of the white tiled fireplace to spread out on the now cooled lava floor because that game was over and race car ramps were now being constructed. When the floor wasn’t covered with toys, we used this space for family pictures and our Christmas tree. Sometimes we even put on plays for an audience of Mom. A living room, and the minds within the space, are big when the TV screen is only 20 inches.

At the time you didn’t understand what southern meant or why the living room and kitchen were comfortably warm after you got home from your fluorescent school. But as we remember, we study. And to your mind today, those moments and settings are now formative reasonings. Resurfaced raw footage B-roll ready to be developed right now. No seriously, right now. Stop what you’re doing, let’s get into it. It taunts you with a sly gut punch and a devil on your shoulder reminder to jump inside your head rather than stay in this timeline. 

The s’more you’re eating just brought you back to that time your brother taught you how to use the microwave and stick a marshmallow and chocolate chips on a plate and blast it for a few seconds. The marshmallow blows up into a cloud and then deflates like tar on your melted chocolate plate. Your faces smashed up staring into the glowing plastic microwave window. You’re 5 and this is so cool and the recipe your brother just shared is a winner. You have no idea your mom is a few years away from throwing out the microwave and buying chia seeds in bulk. Your microwave memory now beeping in your mind reminding you it’s ready to be reviewed. And that can be hard, because we fill in gaps with guesses. And that can be good, because some of the daily moments stuck with us for life are the greatest Oscar-worthy reels. And some moments are nightmare daydreams we can’t seem to fully shake or properly flush or think away. We’re skin covered souls spending our human years learning how to juggle being proactive and properly reactive and how to discover a way to not think and just be present. Our goal is to be here now, in this timeline, while considering the past moments and scheduling new events to keep the forward momentum. But we are our own live-in-rent-free critic, tasked with analyzing past highs and lows as we grocery shop or reluctantly remember to change over the laundry to the dryer only after you’re already in bed. But then you realize you have a washer and dryer in your house and you know this is a damn luxury and you mentally eye roll yourself as you throw your body out of bed. You’re suddenly thankful to toss your now half-dry, kind of crispy laundry into your 1980’s dancing Kenmore beast of a dryer. The process of convincing myself to get out of bed took longer than the task itself. And maybe next time you late-night remember to dry your already dry clothes, you’ll allow yourself to not wince and instead appreciate your basement set up. Spiderwebs and all. Or at least that’s what I hope the director in my head keeps.