I found a book of short stories inspired by Edward Hopper paintings recently in a used bookstore. I’m not usually one for paintings. I really like museums, and I really love art, so I’ll go stare at some paintings to enjoy their colors, but not much else. Because I don’t feel that magnet in my body that attracts me to the artwork.

Music, I feel it. Poetry, writing, I feel it. I sing the rhythm. Dance, of course I feel it. Even photography! I feel it. I feel what it feels like to hold that viewfinder to my eye and hold my breath, finger trembling over the shutter button. Paintings, I’m still learning.

Edward Hopper feels like a photographer. Flat paintings that hold cinematic power. I can walk through them; I can hear my heels clicking on the pavement. I’m spying on the people. I’m not supposed to be looking, but light has made it so that I can see through the glass. The door is open, welcoming me to peer in. Nothing here is constructed or replicated, it’s raw and exact.  

I have yet to read The Edward Hopper inspired anthology, but based on how I feel about his paintings, I’m sure it will simultaneously excite and elude me.

…

I once went on a museum date with a man. I first realized I had a strong appreciation for photography on this date. My date claimed to not understand photography (or something along those lines). But it wasn’t until we had arrived at the photography galleries that I finally felt like I was understanding the art. He didn’t seem satisfied.

Gawking at each photo, I was compelled by their stagnancy. What was it that made someone capture this photo? What is it about the lines and shadows that prompted someone to decide this was how they wanted to remember a certain memory, through this scene in all its light and shadows?

…

Recently, I noticed that I remember my mother in déjà vu like photographs. The other day I was turning off the lights at the end of the night, tired after three episodes of “White Lotus.” Left hand resting on my lower back, supporting me as I bent over to feel for the switch, I saw my mom in my living room.

“I’m becoming my mother” has spilled out of my mouth twice as much in the past year. When I turned 20, I noticed I was having a lot more back pain than usual. “Yeah, that starts to happen when you enter your 20s,” my mother told me. At 21, I noticed some chin hairs that were darker than the rest. Three of them to be exact. Every couple of weeks I go in with some tweezers and pull them out. At 22, it was adopting my mother’s mannerisms. God, for this reason, my teenage self would loathe turning 22.

Now, having turned 23 recently, I’m feeling it all come to a head. As a little girl I often ignored my mother—as most of us do—and only noticed the disruptive aspects of her character. Her sneeze, her yell, her gagging into the sink as she brushes her tongue with her toothbrush. Old memories I choose to forget.

These newer images of her haunt me. Never aspects of her that were disruptive, rather just pieces of her core. Bits of memories I didn’t know I had.

The pictures arise like strange flashbacks in my head as I unknowingly mimic her mannerisms. Never a particular moment, never really a thought that I can conceptualize, but a feeling in my sternum. It’s something like an extra breath, the exhale I let out after clicking the shutter to capture the photograph.

…

Sometimes I can feel his presence in the air next to me, when I walk alone. I feel him there as he once was many walks ago. When I’m alone, I try to think about how it felt to walk next to him. His chin always slightly down, staring at his feet take each step. Which was far different from how he usually looked when he spoke. Usually, he’d look to the sky as if some “holier than thou” presence, someone more permanent than the rest, was up above scribing his words as they spilled out of his mouth. So naturally, I recognized this difference in picture. His head bowed, ear slightly perked as he listened.

When I put myself in these positions to remember, I’m always pulled back to the first time I walked next to him. Back then, what once felt weightless is now suffocating. I can feel his boot crushing everything dead and alive that was under it, squashed and leaving the insides revealed.

Most of all, in these positions, I’m forced to reckon with what feels truer, the softness of a painting’s surface, or the seemingly impenetrable image constantly on display to be penetrated by the viewer. There is much about these memories of our walks and talks that paint a romantic image. There is also much about the way he’s not in my life anymore that frames a dusty picture, tattered. These are pictures I see, and sometimes they blind me.

…

I haven’t read the Edward Hopper collection yet because I’ve been too busy moving.

11 times. That’s what I told my brother when he asked me how many times I’ve moved in the past five years. Most of it was through college housing, which fortunately with that, if you don’t like one apartment you can just move to another without having to worry about a broker’s fee. But the last couple apartments have been mine, truly mine, and fuck, I really enjoyed them.

Before I left, my roommate, and closest friend, gifted me a framed photo of us at the ripe age of 19. There are many images in my mind of times I wished things had panned out differently. This picture she gave me of her kissing me on my cheek holds baggage, lots of it. Back then, and still now, I whine about the things I can’t change, the plans that don’t work out. Hell, I went on one date with a guy to a museum and saw months of us doing the same thing, over and over in a picture frame. I vowed to never become my mother. But none of that went as planned.

Even now, flying in an airplane to my new home, I weep tears over lost time. My stubborn ambition got in the way again. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I mapped out the next two years of my life living with my best friend. I’ve spent months ruminating over the different paths, the options I wish I had or didn’t have. There are paint strokes in my head of red lights, the moon’s glow, sunlight scattered through tree leaves. So many ways for me to see what was or wasn’t planned.

I like paintings, I really do. But I’d like to sit with these photos of my past and present. I’d like to remember them as I saw them, to see their history and their future. I’m tired of planning, I’m tired of shifting. I’d prefer to just click a photo and print it out to remember later.