forgetting
I used to joke ('cause I'm sooo funny) that if I were a comic-book hero my superpower would be hiding, but time has taught me my real superpower is the ability to forget. I know I forget because I don't know very much, and when I look back on what I know I've done, books I've read, places I've been, there's a lot of information missing.What happened when I was young? Most people know that. I don't. Looking at pictures it starts to come back, but it's all places and boats and cars and a guy who's me, and it stops coming back. The smell of wood chips and the pesticide they spray on them reminds me of something but I can't say what, exactly. Probably an office park, but what happened there? Why was I anywhere that halfway brings back a memory? Algae, both by feel and sight bobbing on a small wave, chiggers, thorns, trees rushing past, it's all just imagery, disembodied and useless. And that's all I remember. In part, that's why I write here. So that reality will have continuity. I already know I can escape and reinvent, and it doesn't interest me.
Not only is there already a lot of missingness, I can forget absolutely anything I want to, right now, and that scares me. The cultivation of my way-over-guilty conscience may be a consequence of my inability to retain information. Logically, it makes sense that one who can't remember must consider that anything happened, even the unthinkable. Example: In fifth grade the class came back from lunch and there were bad words all over the blackboard. Nobody knew who did it. The popular kid got up, panicked, and was trying to enlist the help of the class in deciding whether or not to erase it before the teacher got back. Eventually, the consensus was "well, hell yes, we should erase it", but before that happened, the popular kid asked a question that I hear as clear as a bell, all these years later. "Who was the last person out of the room?" I thought about this. I had been the last one out. Did I do that? Yes. Yes I did. It took that kid asking to make me realize that I'd written all over the blackboard. Nobody ever found out about that, barely even me. What does it mean? It means that I was pretty crazy at the time, and that there is a forgetting pattern in my brain. A most troubling development. Or, I didn't do it and just convinced myself that I did. Maybe I made up the whole thing just to entertain myself, because I like things spooky. Am I just imagining that I can forget anything I feel like? By imagining that, have I willed myself into forgetting? It sounds absurd but it's something I have to consider, because I don't know for sure. And that, while an extreme example, illustrates neatly what it's like to be me.
Every time I read a book I have to talk about it constantly while I'm reading it, because if I don't, I can't remember anything about it but what's on the jacket. Depending on how you look at it, this is either a lifelong cycle of self-torture, or a genuine brain malfunction. I'd like it to be that my life as I know it is a lie, and with the right private brain care specialist come out of it and be able to recite Keats into the early morning, all from memory. Sure, I'd seek therapy in order to live the life I fantasize about, one in which I can remember the things I want to, and in order to learn I just pick up a book and its contents dutifully join a carefully organized and cross-indexed library in my brain. Who wouldn't?
Me, of course. More likely, I just don't remember stuff that well, and more likely still, I don't remember stuff that doesn't interest me, which includes Keats and a hell of a lot of other things. I like being almost insane. I feel close to an essential truth, and my presence adds value to every situation I walk into. So, tracing this back through the questions about that day in fifth grade, what is illuminated?
A) I did it as a cry for help because of an accumulation of stress, then chickened out when it came time to fess up.
B) I didn't do it, got bored, and started a thought experiment that could go on forever.
Equally plausible if you ask me. I really don't remember.
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