The Concept of June-uary and Some Thoughts on Recall

It is blustery today, and cold, and somehow muggy. One of those days where you long to be outside (because inside makes you crazy) but you're uncomfortable in your own skin either way. I've been zipping and unzipping my sweater and zipping it again, caught in that not-so-pleasant realm between sweaty and chilled.

This afternoon I suddenly stopped in the middle of my walk home and thought of an old friend-- someone I haven't been in contact with for almost a decade. I stood for a moment next to a neighbor's blown-over rose bush and smiled at the memory of his face and his voice. Then, out of pure curiosity, I went and looked him up online. And, an hour later, we were talking. He looks and sounds exactly as I remember him. He writes the way I remember. He laughs just the same.

It's amazing how memory can be stored away silently for so long and then have no other trigger than a line from a song, or a certain smell, or a stranger's grin. But if you actually sit down and TRY to pull up particular memories or feelings, they melt. They shift around in your brain and take on new characteristics, and you question the validity of them. For instance, my oldest memory is of the sails of the old windmill on Cape Cod... and last time I was there, it was exactly as I'd always pictured it, only the setting was completely wrong. My mind had somehow picked up this entire windmill, perfect down to the last detail, and stuck it somewhere entirely different from where it belongs.

Take this man, for instance. Hearing the timbre of his voice on the phone brought back a flood of memory; I found myself closing my eyes at moments and just listening to the musical rise and fall of each sentence. I am suddenly filled to overflowing with nostalgia, even if our friendship only lasted a short time to begin with. Really, in the grand scheme of things, I barely knew him. But we shared a small piece of our young adulthood, and therefore he represents a connection for me... to me. The same me, a different me. By rekindling this originally short-lived amity I am able to resurface and preserve, for a time, a particular series of moments of my adolescence.

I can look at them from afar, from the now, and think, "Wow. I existed back then. That was me."

What a gift, memory: the talent of framing thoughts. Of adding and subtracting, like paintings that are never quite finished-- they can be erased, or embellished, or covered up, or stripped naked. They can burn you down or make you whole. They don't stay in one spot.

They change you, and you change them, and it never stops. And it is glorious.