Friday, August 5, 2011

The Memory of Now

What do you think of you, now? What did you think of you back when you were a teenager? When you look back from now, what do you think of you when you were a teenager?

I have a serious lack of connection to my past.

That is to say, I have vivid memories of being me in, say, 1985, but not of what was happening around me so much on a day-to-day basis. I couldn't, for instance, tell you what classes I had in my junior year and who my science teacher was. I can, however, remember various teachers well and I can probably still do a pretty good impersonation of them.


I think this may be a result of my naturally and incessantly pensive nature. But I'm not sure this is bad.(My wife sometimes makes fun of me because we will wake up on a Sunday morning and, six seconds after our eyes open, I'm going on about the nature of dreams or tree branch shadows on the ceiling. She is very patient.) 

I tend to be immersed in what is happening to me at the moment, but, instead of this immersion becoming a guarantee that I will remember every detail, it is usually a way for me to absorb the emotions and sensations of that moment at the expense of the details. So, instead of remembering the way my prom date was dressed and what song was played as we danced our last dance, I remember her warm hand in mine and the atmosphere of the place. I might not be able to tell you about it, but I can remember how the experience felt and it still registers in my heart.

Maybe, because of this, I do have a tendency to leave the past in the past. I'm not nostalgic. Not much, anyway. I will, for instance, miss good friends, but I won't bat an eye about something like graduation or moving houses. I don't live in buildings; I live in my heart and mind.

I don't think it is a conscious choice. It is just the way I tick and tock. I tend to be wide-eyed about everything and, because of this, I'm usually too busy with the present to linger in the past. When I'm being flooded with the life of now, why would I bother with something that is dead? The past is important, to me, but only in terms of how it adds up to now, if you follow.

Still, it's good to tally up a life of experiences and say: "Yep. I was there." I might not have a lot of snapshots in a shoebox in my brain's attic, but I do remember. It's just that the memories are stored in my heart, instead -- not as pictures on a wall but as scents on the wind -- a wind that spins forever around me, gently; one that never interferes, but floats close, reminding me of the span of a life with it's cool presence on my skin.

Maybe I like solitude so much because it is the most vivid form of nowness. I'm not really sure what that means, but I am absolutely positive it is the truth.

10 comments:

  1. If I could click "Spot-On" 100 times, I would.

    I wish I was as focused on the moment as you. Sometimes I am, but I'm very often affected by what will happen 'tomorrow' (or more specifically, after the next several years).

    Great post.

    ~ Matt

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  2. Thanks, Matt. I wish I could take credit for an accomplishment -- learning how to live in the present and all that, but it all happened quite by accident with me. I'm not sure how else to do it and, in fact, I have questioned whether I should change things, at times. Now, I'm pretty comfortable with it. Of course, all this is not to say I don't worry about the future. I do that, plenty

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  3. I have to agree with Matt. My problem is I live in the past too much. Well, not the past, but the what if from my past. I seem to charge forward in life with certainty with many of my decisions, but end up looking back going...I wonder.
    Beautifully written Chris. Even got me a little misty eyed. Great work.

    --Papi

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  4. Thanks. The problm with the past is that it is a field after the harvest: the soil's been emptied of value by the pants we grow. It's tough not to try to plant again in spent soil.

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  5. Well said again sir.

    --Papi

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  6. Of course, I meant the "plants" that we grow. "Pants" is much funnier, but . . .

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  7. This concept comes so easily to you! I admire that you are able to just be. I've been struggling with that concept constantly. It's the job of a writer to stay in the present moment, but it's so easy to get lost trying to take notes or photographs, or get lost in the past.

    This also really clicks with me because I just finished Natalie Goldberg's "Long Quiet Highway" (again), which is about focusing on the present moment, in whatever you are doing in life, and especially in writing.

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  8. Maddy -- I probably first became aware of my "nowness" when I heard John Mayer's song "3X5" -- I thought, "Yeah. that's how I think." Why take pictures when you could enjoy a moment. As a writer, I'm not a note-taker. I kind of feel that if I don't remember to write about something, it probably wasn't worth writing about after all.

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  9. I wonder if this is in part a male-female thing - it was the not remembering what your prom date wore that made me think this, because I usually remember those sorts of details and I think most other females I know would too. Embarrassingly, I also almost always remember everything I ate. I think the significance of that is probably only that I am very greedy.

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  10. Z -- in part, I think it is. But I guess what makes me think it is something more than that is the depth of my non-detailed memory -- the permanence of it. I also like to think (because this makes me all cool and perceptive) that is it like looking at a Seurat -- the difference between studying the dots and backing up to see the effect their arrangement has on the whole. But I'm probably just dense, in the end.

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