AM Inspiration: The Remembered Earth and N. Scott Momaday

by Kim, July 21, 2009 at 5:00am

Today let's talk of lost loves. Not in terms of relationships with people, but relationships with places. I came across this poem the other day that captured a very important yet often overlooked dimension of life: attention. Attention is at a premium these days...we feel guilty if we're doing only one or two things at a time, and yet it is so easy to shuffle around completely disconnected from the environment. And then there are the exceptions that stand out in our memories: the house lived in for just one summer whose yard at dusk is forever burned in the memory. The many faces of a familiar desert landscape. A childhood home. A pond or path that was once "yours." When you begin to sort through these places that became woven into the fabric of your memories, they seem both too many and too few. Where are the words to express them, and what was happening during the gaps between?

N. Scott Momaday, a Native American (Kiowa) writer perhaps best known for his novel House Made of Dawn, has also  written some very beautiful poetry, including The Earth. The poem makes you want to run outside and start soaking up as much of your surroundings as possible; it resonates with some deep, ignored twin need to notice and remember. Because after all, when we're rushing down the street, "late", where are we if we aren't somewhere? What responsibility have we neglected during each unseeing dash to or from all our other responsibilities? What's stopping us from creating another loved landscape, another well-inhabited place? Whatever it is, let Momaday remind you how to remember.