In the Time it's Taken to Write This, it's Become a Memory
My name is Jackie and I am a person who…
- Latches deeply to place
- Craves tradition
- Builds and maintains personal archives as a means to understand my present, past, and imagine my future
- Is terrifyingly nostalgic
In the Time it's Taken to Write This, it's Become a Memory speaks to these aspects of who I am. Conceiving of this project has given me peace (nothing will be truly lost - I tell myself time and time again…), creating it will give me joy and maybe even closure, and revisiting it will give me something to hold. I am intrigued by how we narrate our memories: what persists, what gets lost, what is avoided. I often find myself in pursuit of “pure memory,” some documentation of how things really were, but I'm coming to terms with the fact that this does not, and maybe even cannot, exist.
Even though this project will only reinforce my understanding of San Francisco along the narrow tracks of these photos and places, perhaps I don't need to be afraid of the curation. Whether on the page, in my head, or leaving my lips, stories about my life in this city will always be edited for context and self-protection.
Home
The spark for this project came as I imagined packing up my room. I love my room here in the Lower Haight. Naturally, imagining what I may forget about this room made me question what I've already forgotten about my last room. I wanted a way to string together these places which hold the meanings of my moments, and then, one day, vanish to a new owner with little ceremony.
So the idea came: I can frame a photo of my last apartment, and stage a photoshoot holding it in my current room. By the time I leave my next apartment, maybe I can hold a photo of this Lower Haight room. Envisioning this project expanding far into the future comforted me, a balm for dormant grief, the loss of a life I haven’t yet met, but indubitably will. If barrelling down the road of loving and leaving is too much for me, I suppose I could just stay. But that doesn't feel like an option. Anyway…
As I went to look for photos of my apartment, the project grew. I wanted to capture everywhere I am leaving behind, not just my room. The places that shaped me. That met me when I first landed here, held me through all the insane changes I made to my life, and still see me frequently. These are mostly parks in the Haight: Buena Vista, Corona Heights, Duboce.
Buena Vista Park
In choosing particular photos, I worked in reverse chronological order. What struck me then, when the city was a blank canvas? How have those places changed in meaning throughout my time here? By entering back into contact with my eye as of October 2024, I'm hoping to cheat nostalgia, even just a little bit. Creeping up on myself and trapping that “pure memory” like a wild animal. I pulled up emails I had sent to my grandmother (a wonderful writer and archivist whose passing was the background on which my move here took place) in the days after moving, full of photos of my new life I was so eager for her to witness.
Corona Heights Park
Duboce Street
I also included two photos that I believe have magical properties: a photo I took of Duboce street in 2022, and one of Carmelita in 2024. Years before I moved here, I sublet a room on Fell and Ashbury for two weeks in the summer (it was July, I was freezing and I bought a beanie half way through when I just couldn't take it anymore). On a long walk to the mission, I stumbled upon this intersection - Buena Vista Ave and Duboce Ave - and thought: “someday, I will live here.” Little did I know that view would be a fixture of my early life here, as I would move into an apartment on that very street.
Carmelita Street
It only took one week of being a resident on my dream street for another dream to hatch. The first piece of furniture we bought for that first apartment was a couch on Carmelita Street. It was heaven, a dead end in the Lower Haight complete with incredible victorians, hummingbirds, Brigmanzia, blue skies, and fast pacing fog. There it was again “God, how AMAZING would it be to live here.” A year and a half later I would be moving into an apartment a block away from Carmelita Street. It is from that apartment that I write this.
Thank you for reading
Concept and Words by Jackie Marchal, Photos by Jill Pasewark