on memories which evaporate leaving the imprint of a tiny pool as evidence of their existence

Sitting at my desk, looking out the window, I had the realization that I’d remember nothing of this day. It was not a holiday, it was not my birthday, nobody had passed away. I said hello to a few people. I ate lunch. The world continued to rotate on it’s axis in the same way it had done yesterday and a million years ago, and day turned to night. I went home. I ate dinner. I brushed my teeth and slept. Yesterday and ten years ago and ten years from now I’ll have another day like this, one I will forget, and I’ll look at the calendar and say, hey, what was I doing on that day, March 3, 2013, or whatever day it was, and I’d guess it’d go something like this, the world turning, the world turning, the world turning, but of course I couldn’t be sure - I don’t remember.

Sometimes, I don’t think memories aren’t real until they are captured, contained, and stored. A photograph, a journal entry, some souvineir of the moment, something I can see, touch, and hold. I don’t remember learning to walk, yet I still walk. The moment is there, buried deep in the grooves of my brain. I know this to be true - Infantile amnesia happens to all human beings - and I’m still unsatisfied. The lives we live before the age of say 3 or 4 aren’t accesible in our brains, at least not in the slideshow way other moments remain. And yet it happened. My mother tells me of the times I stumbled as a toddler, the times I spit up food, the times I cried and cried, and I feel nothing, as if she is talking about a lost pet. I look at my baby pictures and feel confused. I don’t remember this adorable girl, but that is me. I don’t know how I felt then, but I look happy. This is me, a stranger, but no, this is me, a stranger, but-

This constant urge I feel to record everything culminated when I bought a camcorder. I recording many things, and no, this is not me saying I regret this purchase, that recording everything took me out the moment and preventing me from “Really Living.” Actually, there have been many times at odd hours that I’ve spent looking at years old footage that had turned vintage. A party I’d forgetten about, a glimpse of a boy that at some point in my life, I’d been obsessed with, that sort of thing. But everything can’t be captured. Even bringing my camera everywhere, there are times when I’m sitting with friends, too immersed in the joy of the moment to remember to record. And I’ll realize that the moment will not last, that I’ll never be able to replay it like a movie. There was this time, I was 16 and went to see the musical Hamilton. I went into the dark theater and I walked out after the show realizing I remembered nothing. But still, the happiness I felt during the production stayed with me. The moment had left but I held onto the feeling. Like how I can ride a bicycle and feel this swell of joy as I recall the days I spent as a child riding into the sunset, and those days have blurred into one day and one sunset and yet and I feel nostalgia for the child I was, shy and Pokemon obsessed (and now, still shy and Pokemon obsessed).

There are things I’ve purposefully avoided remembering, as a form of protection. When we began moving out of my childhood home (which my sister would probably describe as a crumbling wasteland), I didn’t take any pictures or videos of anything. I didn’t want to remember what it had become. I failed at forgetting that place, because I still I have that mental map in my head of the broken window in the kitchen and the missing cabinet doors and the broken closet door, and the hump in the carpet in the hallway and the 70’s style wall and the painting of the blue man sat hunched round like a stone (I’ve since learned this is Blue Nude by Picasso) all these things I remember, but there are no photos to verify these memories, and as I grow older I wonder, what was true? Was everything as I imagine in my head? And I feel a slight regret at not capturing these things, because I’ll never really know what was true and what was not. Similarly, I’ve thought if I could go back in time, I’d go to a random day in the 5th grade, and I wouldn’t change anything, I’d just want to watch, to see if life was really like how I remember it back then, 10 years old, some nerd in the back of the class, barely aware of the life I’d live now.

A moment of memory sharing means the potential to be vulnerable, and with that comes fear. If I share with you what I remember, and these memories don’t mean the same to you as they do to me, then what am I left to do but forget? Sitting across from you, if I ask “Do you remember…?” and there’s nothing but a blank stare, I retract like a turtle to it’s shell. There’s a song I’ve been listening to a lot, and in it, Alex Isley sings: Oh, I closed my eyes for memories… There’s an embarassment I feel at allowing certain memories to metabolize in my body so much that they feel apart of me, they’re seeping into my dreams, my regrets, and yet, you probably don’t recall…

In turn, I feel self conscious if someone shares a memory with me that I’ve forgetten. Sometimes I’ll fake it, laugh along, and hope my forgetfulness isn’t caught. Like when discussing high school with my longtime friends. For me, I graduated and my brain immediatly began to flush out everything that happened at that school. Which was somewhat successful. (One time I visited Anisha in Texas and she brought up some something crazy I said as a sophomore and I felt embarrased. My brain had really forgetten…) Now, I look back to high school and think, yes! I would do all of that again. But was it worth erasing all those memories? I had a moment of panic, sitting in my swivel chair. I started thinking about Michelle, a day one friend from high school, who I haven’t seen in a while. How did we meet? Could I remember the moments that solidified our friendship? At first, I couldn’t see anything, except that familiar smile. But then, the little memories returned, like that time I first said “Hi, I’m Erika,” to her, during the summer before sophomore year.

I’m probably worrying too much about these things. There is something that brings two people together, maybe one person remembers that one time and another person remembers this one time but the point is they were both there and both these times brought them closer, meant enough that they can linger in each others lives…

I guess I’m trying to say, I’ve read a lot of books and whatnot and I don’t remember them all, actually I feel like I remember less than what the average reader might recall from a novel, but still they are here, each word has stayed with me in some way, I might unknowingly recall the way an author constructed a beautiful sentence and in turn this influences my writing or how I view the world in general, whether I know it or not, the memory is there. Yes, even when I’m long gone, the memory of myself remains, somewhere in a footstep or a stray hair or the turn of the page, I’d like to believe I am there.