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So interesting! I thought of The Yellow Wallpaper, as others have mentioned, but also the paintings of Shani Rhys James: 'There is something dark and wild and crazy about flowers ... Yet in wallpaper designs they are controlled in a pattern and prettified. In our culture women are also prettified – she is part of the floral background, part of the furniture in a way.'

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Yes, great point. and I do think my mother subverts that with her city walls proposals, leaning into certain passions unleashed!

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Absolutely! I love the vision of wild, burgeoning florals on the city walls.

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Lovely— you are peeling back layers in the structure of the essay too. And those repeated questions as subheadings function like the parallel lines your mother drew, establishing rhythm and borders. It’s all very cohesive and evocative!

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Thank you so much, Victoria

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”The sketchbook showed me that I could trust my earliest impressions and mine them for my memoir. It was an early instance of a repeated phenomenon; dim recollections condensed to become physical in the loft, materializing out of thin air as “a bottle amber perfect,” drawn from the “earth-deposits of our history” (Adrienne Rich, from “Power”)2.  In this case, a sketchbook held a memory of the grace and power of my mother’s hands even as she worked with material that made her ill. ”. Love this paragraph.

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Thank you, Maria.

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Sep 2Liked by Eliza Anderson

Love the painting in the sketchbook of the torn wallpaper. Wallpaper is somehow a big deal for a lot of artists--mostly women I think, which is so interesting to me. It implies so much domesticity and history

I love how you observe that you are now "faithfully following her instructions" of leaning into childhood obsessions. Oh how we slowly peel away the translucent onion skin layers of our family histories in search of some sort of truth or understanding. I so appreciate experiencing it in real time through your newsletter. And when you share it here, we get to explore the universality living in your particular family experience.

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Thank you, Sarah. It does feel like onion layers, doesn’t it? Especially since memory works that way. Thank you for following my story.

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Such depth of feeling comes through your words, Liza. Creative, sad, raw and so heartfelt! You have lead a very rich life despite needing incredible resilience.

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Thank you!!

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The video is awesome! What a terrific essay. I am reminded of Charlotte Perkins Gillman's famous short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

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Thank you, Jill. I once thought she was playing off of that, but I’ve rethought it. Of course, it was in the loft…

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I hadn't thought of that story for years, but when I realized your mother had attributed her ailments to the mold and mildew, it came flooding back to me. The wallpaper sketchbook is amazing to ponder.

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Very good point

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