Recollect

 August 17 Word of the Day: Recollect

 

Recollect the day, its pleasantness, resting into my pillow. The heavy fog, augury of sunny day. Kindness of breakfast barista to pay tomorrow when credit card defaulted. Jasmine, whiter than pinker over side fences. Email with good news. Progress with next week’s speech, two more sentences. Cataloguing a book by the Limbourg Brothers. Light at the end of the tunnel with an arduous task. Girl curled with lapdog curled in tram seat. Crunch of baby corn, wiggle of shiitake, and scent of rice over dinner. Paying a long overdue donation online, at last. Reading Primo Levi and listening to Mozart.

Recollect (October)

October recollects the last century. It was someone else’s way of life, all cloche hats and flares, boogie-woogie and glam. I am meeting someone whose name slips my mind, though they are inexpressibly beautiful, smiling back at me. We’re driven and desirable, is how it looks now. Someone else drew boundaries, where we could go, or stay. Something about enemies, retribution. It was someone else’s war. Speaking to the last century, words falter. Those torsions of language are theirs, formal turning informal as their modern century proceeds. It’s one vast impressive matter, let go of, yet all around us yet.