The question is: where to start? Looking at it all now there
seems to be a common thread but I’m not so sure it started out that way.
Sometimes I can’t even distinguish between real memories and ones I’ve made up.
It happens like that, someone tells you a story, or you tell it to yourself,
over and over until it springs forth actual color and smells. The same way
people get all jumbled up in your mind. I can’t place them. Not your friends
and family of course, but the people on your periphery, the ones you never
really look straight at. Those are the ones that, if I close my eyes, I can’t
remember the details of their faces, just a general feeling. Dreams work that
way too. If I don’t lie with my eyes shut and mull over them they drift away
somehow. I go to tell someone about it and I’m embarrassed because it made
sense and I remembered a moment ago. So there I guess it does all run together,
even the places. Apartments and hotel rooms can drive you crazy even, because
you go to clean a bathroom or you open up your eyes in the morning and you
could be in any one of the places you’ve lived, or none of them. At least they
have addresses, at least they don’t move and change and trick you like the
others. You don’t have to argue with yourself over whether it really existed.
