2004-03-27 - 7:04 p.m.
Along with dreams, distant memories are something that I find fascinate me. The most alluring memories for me are the ones that I can never quite seem to grasp. I suppose that there really is not anything to them other than the fact that I cannot fully possess them. If I could ever truly bring back these memories and realize what they mean, I would find them worthless indeed. Yet that is not the case, so they will continue to hold this power over me and enchant me with their elusiveness.
When I was four, my family lived in a house right on the edge of a busy street, next door to the grade school I would attend only after we had moved far from that location. I see it on occasion, passing by on that street, but I can recall very little about the house itself, only faded bits and pieces. I remember that at first I slept in a crib in the middle of some room, and then later I was moved to a couch that had backs on only two sides. It was placed in a corner under a window so that I was boxed in almost entirely by it and the wall. I could hear the traffic through the glass easily, and there must have been many nights that I stayed up unable to sleep amidst that den. When I think of it now, I can see the colors, red and white, of cars going past, blurry through the foggy window; however, I remember this only as if I had imagined it, like I had thought that is what it would look like, but I never really did peer through to the street. As long as I must have slept there though, it seems only like a few nights that I stayed under that window, perhaps no more than two even.
These memories are wonderful for writing—although buried so deeply, what I can bring forth flows easily onto the paper, almost as though the great effort in recalling them gives them enough momentum to keep going from my mind onto the page. I recognize that the meaning in them is in some ways only imagined, yet since they are so compelling for me to write, I hold hopes that they will be equally compelling to read. This is a strange assumption, but it is also one that holds very few doubts in my mind. Besides, there is more worth in it for me to write my memories than there is for others to read them, so it is of no consequence whether the reading is enjoyable.
It is simple to write a paragraph, if not a page, on a single sliver of a memory such as this, and I have thousands of them each of different times, places, peoples, events, thoughts, dreams, and aspirations—there is no limit to what I could write about. If I were to start today, and try to write everything from my life that I could recall I could not ever finish. Much of this will be of little use for publication. If you are incredibly lucky, you’ve lived a life other’s will want to read about. If you are like most, than it is likely that you will at least come across material that may be inspiration for a story. If not even this though, at the very least, you can use this writing to help you along when no other words will come. I’ve been told that when you hit a block, the best thing you can do is just write, even if what you write is worthless. I will continue to write out my memories, and it is my suggestions and my hope that you will also do the same.
