Nora Vanesky
Hi Rose! There were a few lines within your week 1 writing that really stood out to me -- thinking about favorite places, whether real or imagined, and your next line that brings this idea of place to the sensations we feel when we are there. Can you love a place without loving who, or what, happens there? If you love an imagined place, do you really love the place, or the way that place makes you feel? I have an imagined art gallery that is a recurring motif within my dreams -- I don’t think I could tell you a single thing about this gallery; I don’t know the way it smells, the color of the walls, where it is, or what kind of art they show, but the feeling I get when I enter it night after night is a sense of belonging and understanding of the room far greater than any room I’ve ever entered with my feet. How can I feel belonging to a place I can’t remember, or have never been?
There was another line within this week's writings that I really resonated with -- “I will make mistakes until I don’t anymore. I forgive me, I forgive us all.” For some reason reading this line my brain assumes the word can’t instead of don’t -- even writing this quote I mistyped it the first time. There’s a kind of gentleness about this phrasing. I often feel as if one must push themselves to the point of being unable to get something wrong, but there’s freedom in the idea that you could still mess up at any point, but you simply no longer are. A gentleness about forgiveness about self, and including yourself within the other by using us instead of you. We are living in a time of great conviction and division, but surely forgiveness is even more vital. Does one person have the power to forgive all? Or even themselves?