Whoa.
A heads-up, this is really spoilery about Mad Men because that’s what the post is actually about. I don’t watch the show. But the reason I am reblogging it is this:
I’ve never had a good memory. Put less endearingly: I forget almost everything. Not because none of it matters. It’s just that the communal experience does not stitch into me. I value it less than the isolated moments, less than the space I protect in my head for lines of books that call themselves up off a page like an echo and the particular shade of navy blue that a Malaysian mountain sky might be at 3 am. The smell of the feet of cats who have died. (Popcorn, incidentally. That’s what the feet of cats I have put down used to smell like. )
I remember how you used to clean your bathtub for me, when I would come to stay in your studio apartment. And the light that shone down from the open window above the brick wall, above the water where I sat and read while you were at work. But I do not remember the date of our anniversary or all the movies we have seen together. For so long, I kept forgetting your middle name. But I remember the sound of your voice, the first time we spoke, going an octave lower and quieter when I told you your mean joke hurt my feelings. I remember that you were never so casually rough with me again.
File under: Please don’t ask me to be on your pub quiz team, but I hope it’s endearing when I recall that time you told me how pretty I looked after that bike ride.
WHAT YOU CALL ‘LOVE’ WAS INVENTED BY GUYS LIKE ME TO SELL NYLONS.
by Erica U.
The small tender heart of Mad Men isn’t obvious in the plot lines. It’s not in the divorces or the hasty marriages, the mergers or fledgling reinvented firms—as fun an amuse-bouche as those tasty tangents are.
(Source: brightwalldarkroom)
