And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget/That history puts a saint in every dream*. I am so intrigued by memory. Years can go by and my body refuses to forget certain things. I wonder why—I would have imagined the path of least resistance would be to forget. But my body stubbornly remembers. Maybe the least resistance is the most expedient but not the most meaningful way; this body just knows it would rather remember than avoid disequilibrium.
So I am compelled to think about people and places and conversations and food I can't ever forget.
Sometimes it was a New York City hotel room. An elevator with multicolored lights fading in, out, in, out. A straw fedora hat. A painting of her (or maybe it was a self-portrait) taken out as trash by the cleaning staff the next morning. A phone that doesn't ring when it was supposed to. Whispered conversations when it wasn't supposed to. Blood, often. A hospital, once. The last time.
Sometimes it was tears on a rooftop. A cab ride. A lingering glance. Beauty. Sushi. A purple flower. A woman named Fatima. Serenades on a guitar. A newspaper read in peaceful silence in another town. Kalimotxos.
These days, it is a street corner. Balsamic vinegar and avocado on ciabatta. Hands, pressing. Raised voices; raised eyebrows. Invisible Man. Sounds from a trumpet. Then, Ahmad Jamal. Flies in smoke. Stencils. A room painted brown. Another painted red. A black hat left behind, returned. Silences.
My body remembers and wonders. I wonder.
I wonder why it is that a forgotten dream rushes to my consciousness when I bend over to tie a shoe or to wrap a towel around my hair. There is a passage in Ulysses, too. A memory while tying a shoe. The upside down brain, the disoriented frontal lobe, the disarmed defenses...
I want to know.
* Yes, once again, Tom Waits. I went from obsessive indulgence in The Little Prince to a Tom Waits kick ever since I realized the intensity of my envy of friends who get to see him in concert in July (I'll be in TR).
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