Month: February 2023

names.

I find myself chasing memories. As if playing hide and seek. I am always the seeker. I don’t get to hide.

I imagine these memories floating around in my head like some amorphous nebula. Most of it is a blur, speeding by as I try and pluck something into stillness.

Actively trying to remember works sometimes. It seems like more and more a struggle as time passes. Sometimes I’m left with just memories of memories. I remember having remembered it, but I can’t reach it now. Is it gone forever?

Other times some adjacent memories will return with no warning. I was reaching for something else and now I have this one. I wonder what to do with it. Once I let it go now I wonder if it’ll ever return. I wonder how true it is. Maybe I’ve revised it over time to be something more suitable to who I am now.

Right now, for no particular reason, I’m trying to remember two names. Friends from high school who I haven’t seen since. I remember some vague specifics, but not their names.

One friend was a tall brown boy. He was legally-blind. We’d hangout on and off during lunch breaks and we were in the computer council. This one time I had sprained my ankle playing basketball in gym class. I remember him helping me from the gym to… I don’t remember where. My hand around his shoulder as I was hopped on my good leg. As we passed by the library I remember some kids telling me how silly I looked hopping on one leg. They told me to use the sprained ankle but not put too much weight on it. I remember all this some how – bit and pieces – but I don’t remember his name.

The other friend was a goth-ish white girl. We were just in one or two classes together. English was one of them. We had developed nicknames for each other. We would yell them to each other whenever we saw each other in the hallways. We continued to do this long after we were in classes together. I remember her hair and that nonchalance in the way she walked. But I don’t remember her name, nor the nicknames we had.

Did they even have names? Were we even friends? Did this even happen?

Perhaps I could look them up in a year book. Just that I never bought a year book.

What would I even do with their names?

notes.

I haven’t written much. It’s been a long time.

I used to carry this tiny notepad where I’d jot down thoughts as they appeared. I would make sure never to be far from this notepad. Who knows when a thought may strike and wilt all at once? Leaving just enough time for me to capture it.

There’s many reasons to write (or not write, I suppose). Motivations, muses and moments all count. Sometimes you have them all, but don’t want to write.

Back in 2015, returning from a work trip, I stopped at the waterfront. And started to weep with a friend. For clarity’s sake, I wept and the friend watched/listened. He made a comment about how I could turn that sadness into writing, as if there were a correlation. Maybe there is. But we’ve all written during sadness and joy. I did write quite a bit back then. Most of it was horseshit.

Ultimately, I love the turns of phrases. How one word welcomes the next. You can image a word clearing the way for another, whispering “we need to stick together,” as the next one arrives. Like words tying themselves together and to a tree at a climate protest. Making themselves known. Making their cause known.

My muse now is the passage of time. There is no legacy to leave behind. I hope to be forgotten in a flash (or two, maybe three). So there’s only the moments we make and share, in the moment we make and share them.

Anyway, I’ve started to take notes again. Some vague inspiration has struck and I’m trying to give it shape. The thoughts used to come more or less completed before. I’ve been out of practice. I just get patches now. Hopefully this is just warming up.

There’s a lot of work to be done.