My memory is a strange, horrible, broken thing. We sit at the end of the night and watch my screensaver flick back and forth through scenes that only go back about 20 years, and before that there are huge blanks because I don’t have constant reminders. I simply have… scenes… vignettes… it’s like I don’t have memories, simply layers of scar tissue and response. Not to say I’ve lead a horribly traumatic Life, merely that I know I have emotional responses shaped and formed by things long, long, long forgotten.
Today we were watching something in which a man cradled a woman, comforting her as she wept. A sad moment full of emotion and I had a visceral moment. Holding someone. A significant other. I remember brushing away tears. I’ve done this for multiple women, but the memory isn’t clear. Girlfriend, wife, friend. Holding them in my lap and kissing away tears. It should be burned into my mind but it isn’t.
Burning. Matthew the Bastard burnt my books of memory, all the Little Black Books that held my memories all through high school and college and long, long after. Not that I necessarily would’ve ever gone back and consulted them, but they’d perhaps have shed light onto who I once was. I THINK I’ve grown, but maybe not. Who knows? Who can remember?
I have vague gestalt scenes in my mind. Grade school. Darren kicking the tree at the bus stop and enraging the cicadas that swarmed. Doing it again and again till they got tired of swarming which happened before we got tired of waiting. Hiding on the floor of a school bus as our windows were shot out. Running through the woods, leaping over creeks. Sex. Bulldozers. Cold. Funny. I guess because it’s a sharp sensation I remember contacts of freezing metal but can’t really remember times of overwhelming heat.
Choking in a pool. Climbing a waterfall. Pinching a dog’s ear with an x-wing fighter. I don’t particularly remember being bitten or being transported to the hospital sans my left cheek, but I remember what I did to get bit. Do I remember my Life or do I just remember photographs of it? Star Wars. So much Star Wars. Waste. So much waste.
Gigs and mistakes and kisses and coffehouses. Aztec mochas at the Year of the Rabbit. My father dying. Standing in my underwear sneaking a glimpse of what was on television as a child. Watching the clock creep towards midnight for the first time. Dust in sunbeam. Ha. Contact of burning metal. I remember now.
Playing guitar. Ed Drapeau’s laugh, my father’s voice. My mom’s chortle. Whitney’s hair. Running.
Ha. I remember what it felt like to run for fun. I remember lots of erotic moments, and moments of pain. Showers and glass and when sweating was GOOD. Scattered things that I feel like I should write down, because as I write them they unfold and the memory becomes more real.
But I’m not writing them for YOU dear reader.
That’s private.