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Perspective: Space, Time, Memories Converge

 

Earlier this month I set out on my first road trip of 2021 -- heading south on I-57 to my hometown of Memphis. At the bottom of Illinois in Cairo I crossed the Mississippi River and joined I-55 paralleling the “Mighty Mississip” through Missouri and Arkansas until I drove across it again into Memphis.

 

Credit Paula Garrett

  

Usually I take the M-shaped I-40 bridge, the one that was condemned about a week later, but my GPS routed me onto the old bridge I remember from childhood, and there began the flood of memories.

 

Not memories, actually, it was more like being transported into a distant past that woke up a part of my psyche and draped over me like a time walker’s cloak.

 

There was something about the convergence of the trees, the early evening light, and my close proximity to the physical locations of deep-seated images that mostly stay dormant except when they seep into my dreams.

 

What is that power of place and our indelible connection to it? My favorite artists can conjure up a location so vividly I begin to integrate it into my own experience. Eudora Welty did so with her stories and photographs, and in an essay wrote “the sense of place ... is the ball of golden thread ... to bring us home.”

 

That thread for me on this trip was the muddy Mississippi as it snakes around, up and down and sometimes summons me home.

 

I’m Paula Garrett and that’s my perspective.

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