taking a break
The last few days I’ve spent equally as inspired as the last few weeks, but less inclined to document through all my usual modes. It made me think of the article I read in Kinfolk, volume three by Rebecca Parker Payne, “Undocumented Hours”. I think we all do our fair share of posting and planning posts that it almost becomes habitual. It’s our way to connect with people without the actual connection. There’s a certain sense of freedom in putting down your phone and being present without documentation.
For me, it started Sunday night when my husband and I packed up our kitchen to make tamales in Tijuana with his family. We usually make tamales during the day and it turns into an assembly line, but this time we arrived later and started much later. My husband started pouring drinks and the feeling was so festive. We finished assembling the tamales around 11ish, but instead of finishing them off in the morning, we poured another drink and committed to finishing that night. It never fails that the moments least expected are always the best! So we drank and finished tamales while aunts were dancing, Barry White and Donna Summer playing and grandma checking our work. Everything about that night deserved to be documented, but only in the present moment.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day came and went just the same being in the present moment. Just the perfect way to close out the year, remembering all the beautiful moments without photos, just memories and feelings in the present moment and getting ready to ring in a New Year!
"Let us all remember, now in the presence of one another, that our memories are enough. May we live to remind each other to partake of dinner without pause for a clicking shutter or a scribbling pen. Stay here, drink more wine, and let the memories of a time exist by themselves within you, and between you and the others. And may your art be a sincere reflection of what already exists, not a post of projection for what we desire." Thanks, Rebecca for the reminder.