I recently heard that unfinished work takes up a larger space in our minds. It's called the Zeigarnik effect. It's the reason T.V. has cliffhangers. It's no doubt a benefit in the workplace.
In college, I took a ceramics class and created slab-built pieces which featured images of a shrimp boil, other seafood and organic forms. When I returned after the Christmas break, all the pieces--many of which I never saw to completion--were gone. They have taken up residence in my mind since.
Yesterday, thanks to a summer class I'm taking at a Visual Arts Center, I got to see a final manifestation.
Memories of Dauphin Island have been emerging in my mind in a special way this year. Our long road trip, with an extra carrier on top for boogie boards. Digging holes in the cool sand under houses on stilts. Riding the waves in. Sand in swimsuits. Outdoor showers. Sand crabs. Playing poker with cousins. The Candy house. Luau. The rough deck under our feet. Snow cones. Blueberry pancakes. Peaches. Fun with aunts and uncles. Cousins. A cauldron of shrimp boil, stirred with an oar.
At Nana's funeral this spring, I reminisced with siblings and cousins about these times. These now-adults sprinkled across the U.S. -- Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia--carry in some nugget of their brains this common place and all it encapsulates.
Interesting to think about the ways memory are gathered, and scatter, or are stored, and the ways we can consciously or unconsciously collect them, years later.
