Anne Michaels offered another sentence where I have to pause and breathe at every word to ponder the weight of its choice.

In particular, these eleven:

". . . the distress evoked by the futility of objects that outlast us."

Yesterday (the fourth of july) I went to the alter/installation that Monica Mata Gilliam and Vanessa DeWolf have created. Monica is reconstructing memories carefully, piece by piece, photo by photo and trying to ease the heartbreak of losing her mother with the copper in pennies minted before 1982. Vanessa, on the other hand is focused on "trying to remember" periods of her life that she has very little recollection of, memories that are documented but don't feel like hers.