When Memory Becomes Fact
I am in an odd mood today or possibly I am aware of my consistent odd mood. I have to do some running to catch up with myself and verify which is which. Ha. I am prepared, I have my requisite bagel and tea at the ready while my fingers fly across the keyboard, spreading the blog-tale of my days. Maybe this day, I am suffering a merry-go-round centrifugal force? At least fifty-seven ideas are on the spinning turntable of mind and as the speed picks up, they fly off in as many directions. Is that child-like? “Focus, fella…focus.” One of my ex-spice (spouses = spice) used to dismiss my odd moods as childishness with a bored air. She thought the illusory, fantastical worlds I extemporized were built as a child might build them. I am not so sure, could be. I don’t remember being a child that well so am not sure how to make the comparison. Observation and contemplation lead to the conclusion that I must have been a child once. What’s gone is first-hand, tactile information about being such. At least a particular youngster. Me.
I know I remember my Aunt telling me something I didn’t believe when I was four years old. I remember my Spouse thinking I was childish and I remember having a misunderstanding with God. It is knowledge more than memory. There comes a time, and I don’t know when, exactly, that a memory becomes not a memory any more. There comes a time when you know you remember a thing and you know the details but you don’t feel it anymore. A wisp of past becomes knowledge, a hard thing, no longer seductive or chimerical but a knock-wood firmness that you don’t re-feel anymore when thinking about it. The sensations, the sounds, the smells are gone and the fading-colour paint is finally dry. Is the dried and finished work really a memory then? Is it only a reality, just another fact hanging on the wall, imbued with nothing?
I have knowledge that my ex-wife thought I was childish. I don’t feel insulted or smell or see the room we were in that day, no memory surrounding the memory. I don’t remember what fantasy I was engaged with that caused her to roll her eyes. I have only the fact. She said I was childish. I have the knowledge of a memory but not the memory anymore.
I witness the little children at play with living, gaming with experience, entertaining wild ideas for the novelty of it. “The sun is a flower, because I say so…it is possible that the earth really is flat because Columbus doesn’t know everything!” They are feeling. They are exploding with life. I can sometimes see why my ex saw in me that half-whacked condition but as for remembering it, the doing of it, the feeling of it as a child? No. I don’t remember it, I only know it. On the surface, I am in agreement with her, that I am sometimes being child-like. I do enjoy elucidating under-baked ideas for fun. (exhilarating free associations) I am deducing my enjoyment is what a child feels but not, in fact remembering that feeling.
I know that I can make folks laugh with my inanity, my ludicrous comparisons, my sudden leaps into oblique directions. I can disrupt any conversation with a well-timed outburst. There is laughter, then I see the look my companions give each other…”Is he ever going to grow up.” I recognize that look. I have seen that look on the face of every single person I have ever met. So, then. I know my silliness reflects an immaturity. I know that it is childish playfulness. I have the knowledge of childishness and not the memory of being a playful child.
When memory turns to fact, it is sometimes a loss, it can be a kindness as well. The true loveliness of memory turning to knowledge comes from the times that immediate, cold facts, hard realities turn to memory, which in turn finally become only knowledge of memory. Memory is kind when it finally becomes fact without the ever-constant sidekick, pain.
I miss and would love to feel what I was feeling the day my aunt told me there was bogey-man under the bed. I know what I felt, I remember but I don’t feel it anymore. I was elated, gleeful and pretending to be fearful even though I knew it wasn’t true. I have lost that feeling, don’t know what colour the room was or how old my aunt was but I still have the memory of it. I have the fact.
What I am grateful for is equal to what I just said I miss. I am grateful for those inescapable darker memories having become fact. I know them. I remember them very well, will never forget but they are facts, now. I don’t have to feel or smell or touch them anymore. Good.
Someday, I will tell you about me and God…it is hilarious, really. Ha.
Robert On The Air 