I printed out the picture. I put it in a frame. And every day I look at it and remember, but every day I remember things a little differently to the way I remembered them the day before. Of course I can tell stories. Of course I can say it was New Year’s Eve, that I was drinking wine, that I met some friends in a downtown bar and danced while some live band played terrible nineties covers. I can say I had a fabulous time. The music was bad, the haircuts awful, but still I can say I remember dancing and pulling you closer and posing for the shot with one arm flung fondly around your neck.
Of course I know what the photo is and of course I can explain this and that about who and what. But every day my memory is simultaneously more vivid and more vague. It obscures, and yet it simplifies. It exaggerates, but it forgets.
One day, after spending weeks stuck on the yellow of your shirt, the darker patches that developed under your arms the more we danced, I suddenly recall the velveteen of your ear lobe and the way you leaned forward and nodded when you should have been shaking your head, smiling when you should have been frowning, pretending to be able to hear me over the band.
Then this memory too melts.
I can create. And I can reject.
I deem it imagined, painted, dreamt up in a turn of longing. So I protest. I replace it with something solid, like the elephant sign above our heads – comical with its phallic tusks. I direct people to this object. I highlight its fluorescence, but I don’t try to hear your laugh. I don’t let it go that far.
That is for another day.
On Tuesday, I go to the store in bare feet. I buy ice-cream, eat it straight from the tub on the footpath, return to an empty house, and carry on with my otherwise dull afternoon – cleaning, washing, peeling vegetables – dancing to the music playing only in my head. On Wednesday, I nap blissfully. I nap too on Friday, but I am not content. Every day I remember, but every day I remember things a little differently.
No comments:
Post a Comment