remember the eyes but not the face
Associating good things with bad things, bad things with good things. It is something that our brains seem to do. That song that you loved might remind you of an ex, whereas you might associate getting humiliated with sexual gratification. Sex is a nice place for depravity. Some of them want to abuse you. Some of them want to be used by you. This song reminds me of the 90’s. The 90’s has a flavor, vaguely fruity. How many memories, whiffs of things, ghosts of the past, are real? How can you tell a dream from reality at ten thousand feet? The most dear memories have no context, a free-floating particulate matter. They were part of you, but the surrounding memory needed to place it is lost. Or even maybe, they seem implausible, ridiculous. You want to say that it was a dream. A hard kernel of a dream. Or how about revisiting a place after several years? I once had occasion to return to Toledo, where I grew up, to visit a fraternity conference at UT. We parked in the same parking lot where I have a vivid memory of throwing up due to motion sickness, from some indeterminate time in my early childhood. It hadn’t changed at all. What year is it? 2010? I just put on some Smashing Pumpkins. I want 1995 here right now. I can remember my mother’s cassettes, but she had Mellon Collie on CD. She gave me her old Walkman CD player to listen to it. Night and day is an error. A cycle, which you can ride or ignore. I would like to be flying, ten thousand feet above sea level, in the direction of away. Running away fits me well, says I. Liar. Homeland? My homeland is gone. It was bulldozed by guys in hats. Hats. It’s a good reason that men don’t wear hats anymore, unless they have a job. Or they’re wearing a cap. In FLCL, she asked, why do you carry that bat around if you don’t play? Give me surgical gauze, I’ll dress the wound. We’ll operate. Scalpel at 85% percent. Laser eye, check. We’re going to make you better, faster, stronger. If you replace the whole body, are you still the same person? Before they had pleasure cruises, or Magellan, they had guys in canoes, going to islands where no human has ventured. They’re going to make the silent history. My mind is scattered. I remember elmers glue, at school. We read a book about a native girl, sinew. The Google tells me the name. Whatever we don’t know, we supplement. Bionic girls, bionic world. I am such an awful person. It takes me a lot to even fathom it sometimes. Justification is irrelevant. I should be crushed by all the guilt that I only rarely glance at. Being miserable is not really a penance. And yet…maybe my abandonment of mother is deserved. Oh the nights! When she was holding the knife and she rent and cried. And where was my father? No memory. Where? She tried hard. She wore makeup, taken from a cubical tin. It was a terribly ugly thing. She looked good with makeup on. Or so I thought. But she’s not traditionally beautiful at all, especially when depressed, which she was most of the time. I remember him. He..had a name. I don’t know. He gave my sister wrapped gifts. I don’t remember his face. He was kind. He was not interested in marriage. What did my mother want? The UT computer lab smelled like what I always will think of computer labs should smell like. I have memories of driving places. And visiting a girl, out in the country. Never saw so many stars. She had a pinky that was missing the end. And when we had that fight in the backyard, when we picked the flowers on the tree and threw them. Oh, the fence. And when it was behind that house, where that lovely girl lived. my first crush. she was artistic and she cared, and she was strange. she had games and a messy house, she was jewish which meant she ate matzo, and she went to a different school. she was curly haired, kinda fat. her mother watched quincy on a big tv, and babysat kids. they had a big thick couch covered with blankets. she was older than me, her birthday was in march. and i had a crush on her. and who knows who she is now. actually searching google brings her up, as the first result, still living in toledo. screw you google, for being able to answer all my queries, never allowing me to live in doubt. somehow, despite not being personal with my mother in a really long time, the thought of her being alone is unbearable. and yet i cannot contact her, i just cannot bring myself to it. almost no memory of her which i have is not painful to me. her birthday is a little over a week away. I could contact her. I haven’t talked to her in three years, and haven’t seen her in more than five. But I really do not like being around her. And I don’t want her to see me the way I am now.