Reverberations

"Buck up, my girl, " I tell myself, as if I would actually listen. "Where is your spirit?" 

The empty hallway only echoes in reply. 

Winter is difficult for me, the second of February particularly so. It always goes wrong somehow. I prod myself forward with false joviality. That groundhog with its long and ominous shadow.

"Put the past behind you" I say, as I fall into a time hole and relive my life at warp speed. This isn't science fiction, it's just me trying to get dressed in the morning. 

There was a time when hours and weeks and years and minutes seemed to move about in an orderly fashion, but that was a while ago, I don't quite remember when. Just when I think I've got them stuck down they slide out from under me. 

The only thing to do is ride the wave. 

It's just the way we live now. 

...

On the way down the memory spiral, I try to hang on to the good parts. Swathes of dark green grass. An agave like a fountain. Hula hoops. The summer scent of flagstones in the rain. My yellow bicycle - no, scratch that, I don't like that one at all.

A frigid wind sweeps through a flea market on the edge of town. I push it away.

There are fireflies in the dusk that isn't just any kind of dusk, but the kind we had when I was small. Richard Linklater faked it so well in Dazed and Confused that I realize that it must still be this way, I've just forgotten to notice. 

Sometimes I remember things that reasonably should have been forgotten. Night noises in old apartments. The slant of light through certain window panes. They stand out like symbols in a story whose author has lost the plot. Representing nothing.

So the thread continues to unspool: the kachina that Nancy called the god of nightmares. The smell of incense. Paul and I sharing the ginger soy sauce at that little restaurant downtown. Mai Lee, Lawrence, Sariah laughing. The hum in the humid air. 

It's sad, but none of it means anything to anyone but me. 

...

Angela said "but think of what it's like to be the one who remembers."

She was referring to herself, of course, but I felt it keenly. We'd been talking to Candace, who bemoaned running into her old school friend in town. "She's really sweet, and I mean it when I promise to call, but I always forget about her." 

That's when Angela made her comment, and we gave each other a look. We both knew which side we were on. There's a certain blithe power in those who forget; not only can they casually erase your presence from their minds, but those of us who remember must live with knowing that we were so causally erased.

For those who remember, there is no choice. The reverberations of the past remain

...

I don't know why the current time confusion (of which I'm hardly the only sufferer) takes me this way. Why the rabbit hole of memory is so fathomlessly deep and relentless as it pulls me down. 

One day we will finally orient ourselves, this chromesthesia will end and we'll remember which day of the week it is again. But even as I'm writing this, the synchronicities are piling up. It makes me feel a bit unreal, as if these are the musings of some future self, some deja vu refugee 

I can't help but wonder which version will eventually turn out to be me.