Memories Committed

It seems life happens during the most obscure moments, spaces, places. Memories created after a split second interaction. Music plays the overture to these thoughts, times. I have always had a very strong associative memory. It is probably because this way I can insure that I will never disappear. I remember dates that remind me of other dates. I get that dates in themselves are arbitrary. They are simply a way of keeping everything from happening all at once. But I am marked by dates. I can rattle off to you the anniversaries of my life... first hospitalization, first kiss, first love, the day I met my best friend August 15, 1992. I can tell you that 4 years and one day later we documented this friendship in the form of a scrapbook that sits safely in my home, tucked away with other mementos from my life, more dates. This affinity for calendar days is one that I do not necessarily understand but it is also making an anniversary of something always about to pass. Happy ones, tragic ones, and very minute ones that somehow mean everything to me. I know I should be looking forward and focusing on what is to come as opposed to celebrating what has already happened. Yet, I don't feel as if i am living in the past I am simply finding small ways to celebrate what has happened and bringing it back into the present, bringing it back from somewhere so far away. I want to hold on to so much that I forget in order to embrace new things I need to let go a little bit.

Why is there so much fear in letting go? Is it necessary that i can tell you the dates of all of my major breakups? April 15th, July 8th, March 2nd, August 14, September 29... Those are memories that surely must clutter out other more important things, like the day my little brother took his first step or uttered the first word of a complex language. Sometimes I would like to just watch a sunset on fire, ignited from the underbelly of the setting sun; and not worry that I have to commit the date to memory, or how it reminds me of something that has already happened. Can I, Should I, let go? Probably. I just don't want to feel as if I am losing parts of myself as if they were dandelion seeds caught in the breath of someone else's wish.

I am not at a crossroads, I am not in trouble, peril, confusion... I am still just me trying to let go of some of the excess that no longer needs to be held on to. I have a lot of great new dates that await me. The aforementioned best friend who has many memories etched into my heart, categorized by dates, songs, and laughter; is expecting. A baby. She is having a baby. I joke with her, call her, ask how our baby is doing. It makes me giggle, the same way that our childhood memories make me laugh out loud. But she has 9 months of dates, already approximately 112 days have passed, to remember this journey. I wonder what memories she discarded in order to make room in her head for all that is about to come. I know that i am attempting my own spring cleaning of the brain. What a great time today is. April 30, what will I remember today for. Maybe I should just remember the carefree feeling and not the obligatory thoughts of committing this day to memory. I am trying...

Characters: Fictional and Real

In ten days I read 4 books. Though it would seem antisocial to read this much, ironically it was through this action that I was able to meet all of my neighbors. Yes, all of them. But first, the books. They are easily four of the best books that I have read in a long time; and to read them back to back is something that may never happen again. I should say here that at this moment, though I have purchased a couch, there is absolutely no furniture in my home; aside from my bed of course. There are chairs outside of my apartment, so that is where I generally reside with a great book. There have been many characters that have accompanied me on the porch. There was Alais and Alice; who lived 800 years apart; but their drive to protect the Holy Grail was quite an achievement. I met them in Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse. Phenomenal. Upon putting that book down I literally picked up the other one and nestled back into the arms of a world so different from my own. The book Dogs of Babel plucked me from my life and put me into a place where a man is desperately trying to teach his dog to talk. Though this sounds like the beginning of fantasy babble, it is in an effort to find out what happened the day his wife died. Their dog was the only witness. It explores a journey post-death and pre-death and a man's search for any clues that his dead wife left behind. Beautiful, just beautiful literary work and also a storyline that is so abundantly full of life while death hovers over the whole story.

After Babel, I changed gears a bit and picked up Running With Scissors; a bizarre account of one man's childhood. A memoir that in itself seems born of fiction. I have read many memoirs and it seems as if their goal is to break your heart. That is not the case in this one. I reveled in the hilarity and the odd happenings in this youth's life. After finishing this book it was incredible to look back and see what this young man had actually endured; and the environment he in turn thrived in. Augusten Burroughs has written several works in the memoir genre, this was the first I read. It will certainly not be the last. After putting Augusten's trials aside I moved then to a book called Case Histories. It pulled me in like the comfort of a mother's arms enveloping you in love and safety. Yet with the warmth that it tucked inside of its reader the plot was about a private detective and the cases he was working; families came to him in search of something lost or found, desiring answers that the graves would not tell.

I met these characters while I was meeting my own characters intermittently. Porches and patios, the basic building blocks of a neighborhood forced me to experience what it means to be a neighbor and above all what it means to make friends. I visited many people in these books and in between the spaces I met my new neighbors. It has been a great couple of weeks learning about people that never existed and then hearing stories of truth and life from those that really do exist. I am making great friends.