Another thing about memories is their immense vulnerability. Nearly nothing in the mind has the same fragility as a memory. It is constantly in danger, always on the edge of being forgotten or buried or twisted out of truth.
Lately I have been trying to observe and dissect myself. I’ve seen myself and also others in a certain tenderness when memories are shared. Maybe it’s because we keep them in a very private part of ourselves. They possess a dreamlike texture, a thin curtain away from reality. They are little whispers that we hear when something reminds us of the past. Certain memories are silent until they are triggered and then it’s hard to stop their screaming. It’s funny, the things we record. Making up songs in the front yard. The morning sun streaking through the dusty air in the living room. The car seat in my dad’s red Ford Fiesta. A PBS documentary about Elvis.
It must have meaning. If there is no meaning to these things then it’s a labyrinth I can’t escape.
The thing about young people is that we don’t believe that the world does not expand beyond our personal reality. Adults say this all the time– you think you know everything at your age, but you have so much to learn! Of course I agree with this, it’s the same for everyone. Adults are the same. There is always something left to learn. I don’t know where I’m going with this.
Anyways, it’s fun to be young because life is so incredibly wrought with surprises. The way that infants laugh at things that I would find totally ordinary, young people experience the thrill of the first tastes of love, sex, deeper forms of human connection and thought. I know that this is obvious. I’m not trying to write as though I’m teaching you something. I just wanted to really examine the silly mistakes that we enjoy making.
We can’t seem to think of the millions of possible outcomes of our actions. We project solely based on warning and past experience. You think that your mistake will cause one thing, but it may turn out completely different, a something that you could have never guessed. I’m really losing my train of thought.
Girltown 