Elizabeth Hazen Essay Lands in Coachella Review
Elizabeth Hazen's new essay "Click Here to Relive This Memory" explores the warmth and the chill of nostalgia
" The future brims with uncertainty and violence and harsh colors; it is no surprise that we prefer looking back," writes Elizabeth Hazen in her new essay that contends with a societal and personal obsession with nostalgia. In the course of her essay, she charts her life as a young child devouring handfuls of cereal in front of Saturday morning cartoons, to a young mother mired in a failing marriage, to the struggles and successes of today. Read an excerpt below:
In my inbox, I find the weekly message from Shutterfly: “Your memories from X number of years ago this week.” One click and there is my son, toothless and grinning, face smeared with sweet potato puree. There is a house I no longer inhabit, friends I no longer know, a self I no longer know, a life to which I can never return. The link, “Relive this memory,” a tempting lie.
If I really think about it, though, I must acknowledge the angst and uncertainty of my twenties and thirties, the self-destructive patterns I did not yet recognize, the insecurities that stifled my voice. My nostalgia fades ultimately into more honest reflection on the past, and I fix on what might be a lesson in all this looking back: one day, I will long for the moment I am in right now. I remind myself to pay attention, to savor what I can.
Sometimes I think that, through memory, we build armor, adding layer upon layer like expanding Russian dolls. I see my son’s face hardening, his defenses stronger, and his actions more careful and strategic than they were even a month ago. Sometimes I think the opposite; memory strips us away, like birch bark in a storm, or onion skin, revealing more vulnerable interiors. His face as the Pink Panther dumps laundry soap into the machine, the way his voice changes when he exclaims over pictures of the cat. Likely, it is both, some memories serving to strengthen us and others allowing us to let down our guards and become, if only for a moment, who we once were.
Earth Day Reflections: To See for the First Time
“Our communications are profuse and immediate, as is our consciousness of the interrelationship of all that exists. We’ve seen what we often leave in our wake—homeless populations, spoiled wilderness. We can see the way the decisions and investments that we make, here, everyday, can effect just how much milk a baby in Uganda gets. Our world is a teeming, mysterious, multi-cultural mousetrap of a place where everything seems to hinge on something else. We share a new concept of this planet as a finite space, dense, and more difficult than ever to navigate. We live in an environment fraught with hazard, and it is important to have good guides, guides with insight—those who tread softly.”
Joanna Biggar’s Picks for NPM (Week 3)
Week three of National Poetry Month is here and we are still celebrating! So as the champagne continues relentlessly foaming for party-goers catching their tipsy mid-air, we asked author, Joanna Biggar, to select three poems she thinks are worthy of applause between wassails.
James J. Patterson’s Picks for NPM (week 2)
In honor of National Poetry Month, We asked author and essayist extraordinaire, James J. Patterson, to select three poems he’d like to see celebrated. Along with Walt Whitman’s “On the Beach at Night Alone” (featured above), he chose Wordsworth’s “The World is too much with Us”, And Last but not least, the famed American Poet Robert Bly performing the poem “On Being a Man” by the famed Spanish poet, Antonio Machado.