Lightshot

Memories are not stored in alphabetical order. I discover this after an attempt to shift focus of the mind’s eye forward or backward from an enduring scene. I manage to recall a specific detail or perhaps an event & typically there is an expansion of emotion accompanying this recollection. When I ask: “What happens next?” the scene dissolves into the undulating folds of time.

Can I hypnotize myself into flowing through memories sequentially, so that I might roll along with the coherence of the story I am trying to recount? Should I even attempt this or should I just carefully explore what remains, as a jeweler might inspect what remains of a precious stone which has been randomly fragmented?

An Observation: Scenes illuminated by sparkling sunlight have a longer shelf life than the stored memories which happen under the cover of darkness.

As I grow away from childhood, the recollections from that time—the joy & surprise of youth & all that was so easily commemorated, those images wan into the background to permit the  emergence of memories which seem threaded together with what would best be described as nostalgia. The feelings evoked within this pattern fall outside of what might be considered everyday. My mind collects the instances where the senses were somehow enlarged; the past becomes a collection of mystical expansions.

Memories float by with only the barest details to identify them; time & place are randomly co-mingled. When I catch hold of a particular memory to pull it in for closer focus, the scenes are shortened, truncated.

What is the theme of these seemingly incongruous remembrances?

{Artwork by Daniel Trindade Scheer}

Childhood Bliss — In Deconstruct

Can we re-visit childhood memories & expect to discover something we might have missed when experiencing firsthand?  My memory banks are full of such details but in general, I chose to leave them where they lie, frozen & half-forgotten. I dislike people who reminisce too much & as a writer of fiction, I have sworn off my own life as material to write through.

Still. I cannot help but wonder if  I was to undertake an exercise to flesh-out details from any given memory, whether this amplification might trigger some powerful conversation. Writers of fiction require imagination to produce entirely new instance. Like petroleum being converted into jelly. the raw material is converted invisible.

She called it mousey creeping. It always occurred in the evening when she had drank a few glasses of scotch. I would lie on the sofa next to her armchair, the one with the pillow set up against the upholstery of the cushion to provide extra support for her bad back. My arm would rest on the edge of the sofa, reaching out towards her chair & she would extinguish her cigarette & take the hand that held it, slowly & gently & began to lightly run the tips of her moon-shaped fingernails just on the surface of my young skin. I remember goose bumps & waves of relief. It was the tenderest tickling, light & slow & with my eyes closed, time suspended. I never wanted it to stop.

What were my thought when my grandmother comforted me so? As the hand that carried her three rings—a wedding band, silver & plain, the diamond & sapphire ring which went to my mother when she died & will come to me eventually. . . an ornate S-shaped silver & onyx ring purchased on a holiday in Mexico—as this careful hand traveled up & down, gentle & slight, how did I view the world in those moments of bliss?

When I am fortunate to receive a pleasurable experience, after the initial wave of recognition & warmth settles down, my first thought is—how long will this last? Anxiety takes seed; it focuses on the endurance of the giver of this pleasure. I am concerned about fairness; I worry about how I will repay this kindness.

My memories of pleasure are tinged with obligation.

{Images by Caras Ionut}