April 20, 2024
The intemperate hand slides through the pack of photos. I glare at them; non-existent to my remembrance, they have become use to my iniquity. Some of them have developed a cast of furtive cracks, a rub-off of the surroundings. I look at the tree behind me; it looks like a serpent gliding its torso hunched by a heap of leaves. We both stand under its shadow, serene and unstable—me and my memory.
I disliked creating memories. It is unaffordable to tender to them in the precarious precepts of life. A person gone, a day gone but the memory lives. I often ask the intolerable dust prying under the soul of my boot, if you can be brushed off why not the memory? I often look up at the carte blanche of stars wickedly pirouetting in situ; they don’t falter in their appearance then why memory flocks in perusals and denials?
I resist memories; an encrypted scrimmage that leaves me wanting less from life because ‘living’ only gave memories, the burden of which is difficult to roll in the savoir faire of human pinballs conscientiously deploying luxury of being known.
I don’t want to be known, to be defeated or be victorious, or to be judged or be desiccated by human paranoia. What is the use of creating memories, I frequently reflect. But the remarkable insinuation of my mind paints an impasto of my pleasures and displeasures.
So many memories I had now! Different shades! Which is the one I carry?
I remember once embarking on love made my heart bleed and then the objectified marriage helplessly brought a smile. The years gone by selected memories for my ennui. Which one I was to carry; to shed tears in the memory of the inconspicuous loss or beam in delight of the memories that were devoid of that loss. I somehow, carried both.
What is real? Is it the memory or the thought that persuades the memory to breathe real in our energized version of human trials? Doesn’t it have the ability to ignite ill-disposed passions and curate an embryo that destroys the evanescence of survival? Another fault of memory is that it runs piteously like a free-flowing fluid during grief, and somehow also has the ability to turn happiness into a paradoxal virtue.
- You laugh aloud and instantly are reminded of the last time you cried.
- A discreet look at your husband playing the patriarchal intransigence falls back on the memory of his once inviolable éclat.
- The fear of death brings in the memory of years truly lived, and the life now unacceptable has a memory when death in prolificacy escaped the solipsistic-self.
Empty nest when children fly to be their own devil looks imprudent; parents grieving their chest to memories of ineluctable bliss but now look at the perfidy? Their return brings on a cultural shift piercing a halberd; the mother asks, “Which memory to keep”? The one that sings the arpeggio of acceptance or the one that plays a staccato of denials.
And now arises the implausible rooted question—what makes a memory good or bad?
I glance at the photograph again, ‘me and my memory’. How do I recollect this memory? IT looks perfect to the naked eye; I have never covered it with clothes though. In watchfulness, it seems a good memory; my ego, my satire solemnized in tut with the inner calmness and soul searching, no impending doom. Only me and the impregnable fortress of my memory!
I again see the backdrop, me standing tall, the gloom only I can predict; it was after all a bad memory. I had just visited the funeral of someone I loved dearly. Walking past the unchallenged whereabouts, I find recluse under the tree, to be clicked by my companion to create another memory. The pristine equanimity of the field sewn in grass and prodigal branches was quick to attract attention but the poignant lines on my face could not be captured. I thought about the soul to be frisked at the heavens. What did it carry with it? Their memories!! Or left it for us to usurp yet another territory of delusionary discursives?
I just hate making memories out of nowhere. It creates a divide of who I am and who I was, creating a long pathological intrusion to my craft of ‘real me’. Those who vouch to be my friends, hell no! Speaks of their glorified gallantry to choose me in their memory but the load of carrying them along is a bit mystical; and I hate to be a psychic. Standing in front of a hill has never been a fulfillment. Why I need to create a memory of it. I don’t belong here and many times have been awakened to memories I don’t even remembering making them.
My memory is ‘me’—right now—having a tablet to cure my Dementia.
What I have left behind is a state of mind, which no longer judges my present.