What is a classic?
The Giving Tree in English. But not in Hebrew.
What is a classic?
The Wonder Years. Especially the one in which Paul becomes a bar mitzvah. Or any episode with The Byrds as background music.
What is a classic?
Mighty Love. Let My Love Open the Door. All You Need is Love. In My Room.
What is a classic?
Cornbread. Warmed.
What is a classic?
Square dancing in gym class. Sorry, more Wonder Years.
What is a classic?
I don’t know. Classics are supposed to be timeless and yet some classics have changed for me with time. Like, The Giving Tree used to be IT for me and now I suppose The Missing Piece is. But that just happened 15 minutes ago. Can it be a classic already? Moby Dick is not a classic, and yet it is, just not for me. Not yet. But it might be one day and then I will look back at today and realize I was ignorant of the classics. The Wizard of Oz is a classic, but I’ve watched it too many times and now it is a classic, but stale.
Like The Shawshank Redemption.
Like TBS.
Like Apple Pie.
I suppose if I had to say, a classic is that which makes me cry when I am not sad.
What is a classic?
The tune to My Darling Clementine.
Mint.
Feet in the sand.
The Barbie Dreamhouse with the elevator.
Jim Croce.
Half-burnt marshmallow on a stick.
Josh and Jodie.
My dad’s green fiat.
Pepsi Free.
Yesterday.
That time my Bubbi cried at Denny’s because her eggs were runny.
That time my brother threw a rootbeer bottle at me.
That time the car was stuck in the mud in a rainstorm, but I only remember that one in a dream.
What is a classic?
Forgot my locker combo.
Forgot to study for the final.
Left my passport at home.
What is a classic?
“These poems do not live: it’s a sad diagnosis.”
What is a classic?
“In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves reduced to I
and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible.”
What is a classic?
“It is startling
to realize that
some of our most cherished memories
may never have happened — or may
have happened to someone else.”
What is a classic?
What is a classic?
——–
The above contains poetry by Sylvia Plath (“Stillborn”) and Adrienne Rich (“In Those Years”), and commentary on memory by Oliver Sacks
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