Tangled Memories

Do you ever hear a song on the radio and are instantly brought back to a moment in time? There is a line in one of my favorite songs, “..Funny how a melody sounds like a memory” and whether those memories are good or bad, I have always appreciated a songs ability to take me back in time. Recently, I have realized that tiles and tangles have that same ability.

I have been working in a new journal lately, but recently I grabbed an old one by accident to bring home with me for the weekend. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed that there were tangles and tiles that sparked all kinds of memories. Some were good memories... my pages filled with one specific tangle and I remember that “A-ha!” moment when I finally got it. The tile I created in the airport one my way to my Honeymoon. Pages I filled in the back of the room at a CZT seminar or during a trip to Europe.

However, the pages that really stood out to me were the ones that sparked some not so good memories. There was the tile that immediately brought me back to the plane ride to my Grandfathers funeral. The tile from when a loved one was in the hospital and I was waiting for an update. There were pages of mooka, huggins and marasu, my comfort tangles which I was looking for comfort in. Although there were no words on these pages, they told a story of a particularly difficult time I was going through, there was even a page where my work was unfinished, and I remember the news I received that moment that made me stop tangling.

I “read” each page of tangles and tiles; each line and curve, every shade of gray, every stroke, and I thought about all the different memories that they held. Although some of them were sad memories, I was not filled with sadness. I was reminded of all those feelings that brought me to put pen to paper; sadness, anxiety, frustration, but more importantly, how they did not last. That each of these pages held lessons that I learned along the way and I was filled with a sense of calm and of peace, and resiliency.

So, I turned to a blank page in the journal and filled it with tangles, knowing that when I look back at this page, it will fill me with the memory of a warm summer day and a smile on my face, which is only fitting since the next line in the song is “Like the soundtrack to a July Saturday night.”