You can’t step in the same river twice, and the same is definitely true of canals. You shouldn’t even step in a canal once. New swans picked at new debris outside my bedroom window every morning, rocked by the wake of a passing barge. The canal was full of other people’s trash, an exquisite corpse of object memory.

Memory works in a funny way. We salvage scraps of meaning from a swirling mass and fabricate our own worlds. I collected little bits from fables, fairytales, my sister’s “borrowed” diary, my parents’ friends’ dinner table stories to create a personal mythology.

I collected things in general. Chapstick, sunglasses, figurines, stationery with pictures of mice. I always liked the feeling of seeing things side by side. I like the space between a nose and mouth, a stack of quarters, the relationship between the arms of a chair. 

When we moved back to Vermont, the canal and the swans were replaced by an icy creek and friendlier birds. I liked to stand barefoot in the stream, watching the rocks change shape, the water sparkle, and my toes go numb. 

I paint for the same reason I lined up my mouse stationery and chapstick, and stood in a freezing stream. So I can look at the space around and between things. So I can stand still, even as the world moves around me.