So I've been taking a class called The Art of Writing Nonfiction and we have to write all of these essays and shit and like. I dunno. I keep writing these little. autobiographical pieces.
Like this:
"Looking back on the course of my life, it strikes me how very little I genuinely remember. I view much of my past as though looking through a wax-paper window. Details are hazy; speech is garbled into foreign languages that I couldn't possibly understand but a few words of. And so the search for clear memories begins and suddenly I can't remember whether my memory of falling into the campfire in South Dakota is entirely mine or pieced together from the stories my parents told. Do I actually remember tripping and falling in? Do I ACTUALLY remember being snatched out and having a five-gallon jug of water poured unceremoniously over my head and then drug over to the nearest yard light to be inspected for burns? Or have I just heard the story recounted enough times to allow my imagination to fill in the rest?
"And while I think about all of these things, it occurs to me just how goddamn vacant I have allowed myself to be my whole life. I am never fully present. I am never fully invested in what I'm doing RIGHT NOW. And does that bother me? The answer to that question could never be anything but yes. Of course it bothers me. I have spent my life insisting to people that I am mature and involved, observant and immensely analytic. To an extent, none of these are lies... at least until I try to remember what my life has been like. We have pictures of single moments in time, but I look at these pictures of my life, of events that should stand out to me, and I remember nothing but flashes of faces, flashes of scenes that mean nothing in larger context and nothing to me. Why do they stand out over the things that actually meant anything? Why do I remember how the audience was arranged at my second-grade spring concert but not where my family was? Why do I remember the things that I remember versus the things that I WANT to remember?
"In part, I blame my classmates in my early years of school for making life so miserable that I didn't pay attention to anything they did or anything that was going on around me. It didn't matter what was going on--I wasn't likely to be included anyway.
"So here's what I do remember: I remember playing in the mud with my little brother, playing out some nonsensical fantasy story about bubblegum, and I remember my mom hosing us off in the backyard. I remember how piercingly cold that water was and the way that it felt like razors sluicing through my skin.
"I remember coming home from Kindergarten one day to find Matthew sitting on the couch with his hand wrapped in a really bulky hand towel, suggesting something between the towel and my four-year-old brother's hand. My mother whisked me out to the wheat field to ride around in a combine with my dad so that she could take my brother to the hospital for stitches. Perhaps he'd already gotten them; I guess I don't remember that anymore. I remember seeing a long, dark pink line curved along the length of his finger and tied together with black cord in seven hard little knots. I no longer remember that scar, and this saddens me greatly.
"I remember sitting in a salmon-pink--"two-toned brown!" Matthew always insisted exasperatedly, never willing to give in to my assertion that he drove a pink truck--Ford pickup outside of the grocery store while my brother cried about cringing because kids from school raised their hands to wave at him while I was buying fruit snacks. I remember being confused and concerned and sad for my baby brother, who had been treated even worse by his peers than I had been by mine. But I don't remember what he was wearing that day or what his hair looked like or what he said when I told him that he needed to eat my Veggie Tales fruit snacks because it was purely impossible to be sad while eating Veggie Tales fruit snacks; it's just a fact.
"I remember that Matthew came into my bedroom at midnight on October 9 of 2010. I remember that he tried to talk to me about something, probably the Resident Evil movie he'd seen with a friend that night. I don't remember what he said to me. I do remember brushing him off and trying to get rid of him. I can't remember if he tried to hug me goodnight before he left, try as I might. And I can't remember if I hugged him. I imagine that, if I did, it was dismissively, in order to get rid of him so that I could return to whatever inconsequential nonsense I was entertaining online at the time."
I will continue writing this later. I can't take the next step tonight.
--Emily
Like this:
"Looking back on the course of my life, it strikes me how very little I genuinely remember. I view much of my past as though looking through a wax-paper window. Details are hazy; speech is garbled into foreign languages that I couldn't possibly understand but a few words of. And so the search for clear memories begins and suddenly I can't remember whether my memory of falling into the campfire in South Dakota is entirely mine or pieced together from the stories my parents told. Do I actually remember tripping and falling in? Do I ACTUALLY remember being snatched out and having a five-gallon jug of water poured unceremoniously over my head and then drug over to the nearest yard light to be inspected for burns? Or have I just heard the story recounted enough times to allow my imagination to fill in the rest?
"And while I think about all of these things, it occurs to me just how goddamn vacant I have allowed myself to be my whole life. I am never fully present. I am never fully invested in what I'm doing RIGHT NOW. And does that bother me? The answer to that question could never be anything but yes. Of course it bothers me. I have spent my life insisting to people that I am mature and involved, observant and immensely analytic. To an extent, none of these are lies... at least until I try to remember what my life has been like. We have pictures of single moments in time, but I look at these pictures of my life, of events that should stand out to me, and I remember nothing but flashes of faces, flashes of scenes that mean nothing in larger context and nothing to me. Why do they stand out over the things that actually meant anything? Why do I remember how the audience was arranged at my second-grade spring concert but not where my family was? Why do I remember the things that I remember versus the things that I WANT to remember?
"In part, I blame my classmates in my early years of school for making life so miserable that I didn't pay attention to anything they did or anything that was going on around me. It didn't matter what was going on--I wasn't likely to be included anyway.
"So here's what I do remember: I remember playing in the mud with my little brother, playing out some nonsensical fantasy story about bubblegum, and I remember my mom hosing us off in the backyard. I remember how piercingly cold that water was and the way that it felt like razors sluicing through my skin.
"I remember coming home from Kindergarten one day to find Matthew sitting on the couch with his hand wrapped in a really bulky hand towel, suggesting something between the towel and my four-year-old brother's hand. My mother whisked me out to the wheat field to ride around in a combine with my dad so that she could take my brother to the hospital for stitches. Perhaps he'd already gotten them; I guess I don't remember that anymore. I remember seeing a long, dark pink line curved along the length of his finger and tied together with black cord in seven hard little knots. I no longer remember that scar, and this saddens me greatly.
"I remember sitting in a salmon-pink--"two-toned brown!" Matthew always insisted exasperatedly, never willing to give in to my assertion that he drove a pink truck--Ford pickup outside of the grocery store while my brother cried about cringing because kids from school raised their hands to wave at him while I was buying fruit snacks. I remember being confused and concerned and sad for my baby brother, who had been treated even worse by his peers than I had been by mine. But I don't remember what he was wearing that day or what his hair looked like or what he said when I told him that he needed to eat my Veggie Tales fruit snacks because it was purely impossible to be sad while eating Veggie Tales fruit snacks; it's just a fact.
"I remember that Matthew came into my bedroom at midnight on October 9 of 2010. I remember that he tried to talk to me about something, probably the Resident Evil movie he'd seen with a friend that night. I don't remember what he said to me. I do remember brushing him off and trying to get rid of him. I can't remember if he tried to hug me goodnight before he left, try as I might. And I can't remember if I hugged him. I imagine that, if I did, it was dismissively, in order to get rid of him so that I could return to whatever inconsequential nonsense I was entertaining online at the time."
I will continue writing this later. I can't take the next step tonight.
--Emily
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