Modern correspondence My email account was disabled a few months ago. I ran out of storage and never bothered to make room for more, despite my wanting to. There are a lot of things I want to do that I never actually do. I wonder what kinds of things I’ve been missing what words that will never reach me. I’m sure most of them are spam but there was always the occasional email which kept things interesting. A reason to check the account at all beyond using it to subscribe to stores for the reward of 10% off my next order. I hope that these senders aren’t insulted by my lack of reply. I hope that they understand that I, too sometimes feel like those unreceived emails intending to go somewhere but not reaching it stuck in a middle ground where existence is uncertain like a Schrodinger’s Box of communication.
Childhood The sun in the summer felt warmer and the snow in the winter was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was never hot or cold but always Just Right. Construction paper was my medium of choice and I built the tallest cities out of nothing. My dogs could live forever if I just believed hard enough. I miss waking up to the sound of my mom frying potatoes. The only internet I used was to play Webkinz and this was all I needed. To have pizza was to dine like royalty and money issues mattered but not to me. I was alone a lot but not in the way I am now. I could read and read and read and there was always time to read more. My imagination spanned the globe but is now reduced to the size of a paragraph.
Washed up They say we eat a credit card’s worth of plastic a year from the land to the sea and back again. I think there’s an equal part of me lost to the water. An eye for an eye pieces of me drowned in rivers I’ve never seen the runoff of a sedentary life. I’ve always lived near water always lived specifically on a peninsula. Nearly surrounded but not quite always aware of the confines within which I exist. Everything is arbitrary until it isn’t and even though I want to believe I can do anything at any moment there’s water all around me and sometimes I feel like I’m drowning even though I know how to swim. Everyone wants a coastal home but that coast will recede to nothing and I will be far away with nothing but land and opportunity in every direction. The current is beyond my control and so is my life.
The commodity of memory I look around at the objects surrounding me the possessions of mine which are now inextricably tied to someone else. I cannot look at a mug without thinking of how I was with him when I bought it a rock without recalling the beach I found it on during our last vacation. Things are just things until they are not until they carry the weight of memories that can make it hard to move. Physical manifestations of the intangible produced by the tangible. An exhausting cycle of commodity and sentiment. The value I place in these things is a result only of the value of the relationship they represent. But when the relationship changes why do these objects still mean so much? A longing for what was or perhaps what still is. What does it mean when you’re not sure? Am I in too deep or just still learning how to swim?
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Photography Credit: DH
Senna Catenacci is a recent environmental science graduate from Michigan currently living in San Francisco, California. Her work is not featured anywhere (partly) because she has never submitted anywhere.
