We have brains asks:

While sifting through my wreck of a closet, perusing books of mine to list on the book exchange board, I came across my very tattered copy of Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Besides being brilliant in the creative sense, Walker singlehandedly revived the works of Zora Neale Hurston, and tries to keep readers aware of many other African-American authors that are commonly ignored in the literary canon. (Yes, she also wrote The Color Purple. While I did enjoy that, I prefer her essays.) In "Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," Walker writes: [B]ecause her marker was made of wood and rotted years ago, it is impossible to tell exactly where her body lies. In the same cemetery are most of my mother's people, who have lived in Georgia for so long nobody even remembers when they came [...]If it is true that land does not belong to anyone until they have buried a body in it, then the land of my birthplace belongs to me, dozens of times over. Yet the history of my family [...] is a history of dispossession [...]it was always in danger of being taken away She then goes on to say about Dr. King, "He gave us continuity of place, without which community is ephemeral. He gave us home" (142-145). 1. How does one retain memory when all that remains are shoddy wooden markers or yellowed notebooks? Whose, or what memories, do you try to keep alive, and why? 2. Can you relate whatsoever to the African diaspora that Walker alludes to? Do you have any sense of community, or are you also scattered? Where are you at home? 3. How does one build community? What is the point of it all? Answer any or all (hey, or none. It's a free country, right?).

I keep a diary primarly to keep memories. I write them down, little things that have happened, thoughts I have processed, memories that IH ave had. I try to write when things happen so that I have them written down, kept, unlost to my mind. I can go back and remember the uncomfortableness of the hospital, the flooding, the new job glory and the wedding. I can remember the happiness and the sadness of the past little while and revel in my life, kept pixel by pixel in a little screen.

But can I keep the memories if this are not in this format? Can I sift through the "shoddy wooden markers or yellowed notebooks" and hold them close? Of course. Yes. Most definately. There are things you don't forget. A dying man saying that yes, he does love you. Children in the school yard teasing your athletic inabilities. Trips where you felt you were becoming the person who want to be. People who shape your life - good and bad - and the things they say. If they are not documented, you may not remember the exact phrases, the exact times or the exact moments that things happened, but you know they did. My life existed before this diary and will continue to do so after I finish writing. I remember more than the documented in my life.

But what do I remember. Whose thoughts and words do I hold dear? How do I do this? And what do I want to remember? I want to remember my grandparents. I still remember my grandfather, dying of lung problems telling me to take care of my lungs. I still remember going 'out on the boat' with him. I remember my grandmother, how much she cared for us and for me. How much she noticed. I remember the smell of baking in the air when they visited - her pies and his bread. I want to remember the man who would have been my father in law. He died shortly after I began writing in this diary, but I didn't document it, mostly because I knew it was to raw, to harsh to write. He was young, was diagnosed with Cancer in April, died in July. He was one of D.'s best friends. It was a tragedy. I want to remember him. And I still can, two years later, remember the scent of the hospital, the nights spent visiting, the stories that I heard. But more than that, I remember his joking with us. His teasing our cat. His smile and his laugh. The time he picked us up and we were loaded and his reaction to that. I remember.

I also remember those who I've not lost by death, but by circumstance. Friends who I chose to end relationships with and those who chose to end them with me. And those with whom fate stepped in and pulled us apart. I remember, even though they're not documented, I remember. I try to remember it all - the good and the bad. This way, I can learn. Do you learn more from teaching or from remembering? A question I might try to answer at some point.

Perhaps remembering through tattered means is a better way of remembering. It's not black and white. You can feel the memory. It is from inside of you and through your senses you can breath and hold it close.

But how do you form a community from your memories? How do you form community at all? Do you form it on the memories of a time past, and the recapturing of that? Or do you form it on memories and the wishing to change that? Is your focus to relive or to revive? Or could both be considered the same thing, just in different focuses? I feel that community is a group that is bound by a common memory, a common focus or a common goal. We can have different communities within our lives - online communities, school communities, home and family communities. Those who are part of one may never be part of another. Yet we play a part in each type of community and our absence would be noted.

At school, we are trying to build a new community. We are working to build a community with a peaceful focus. For this, we have had to shed the memory of previous years and look to the future. Through this, we have our students work together and foster pride in their actions and their activities. We do not look back and wallow - we look forward and rejoice in what we can build.

At home, family could be the term for community. It is a group that has a focus. But it's harder. I have a close family, my husband less so, in some respects. Yet, there is a community there where everyone has a role, everyone has a place. You know who to call upon when certain things happen. And within this family-community, there are people added that are not related by blood to anyone within the community. Boyfriends, Girlfriends, neighbours, etc. Again, there is a different focus for all as those who I bring to the community may not be those who others know. But it's like that with anything - we all bring our own strenghts and flaws to any community.

What is the point of a community? The point is to have someone to fill different roles that you may encounter in life. Just as a town as a community has a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, the community of your family has people you can go to when you need particular things - help with an assignment, a shoulder to cry on, a smile, a conversation. We build communities for this reasons and we build ourselves a place within them. We don't need to keep a written or proper memorial of these events as we know when they have left by the void that is found in our community. By all of that which is left undone. By the fact we have no where to go. We can honour their place with fancy memorials, but it is more important, in my mind, to hold them close within us - build a memorial in the heart and mind and keep them honoured there.

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