Four ~ Memory

Dear K-----,

       I hope you're settling in well. I'm still not finished unpacking, but I'm feeling a little more at home now.

       Strange, how quickly I adapt to new realities. In even the midst of our choir's ten-day sojourn through Italy, I felt like those around me were my family, that the endless succession of ancient wonders seen through sleep-deprived eyes straining in the early morning light was my entire existence. It's not that I forget the past, but that it fades into something very detached from me, the distance between memory and I is the same as that between a dream and reality...

       There again, the latter distance tends to be unusually short for me, so perhaps that accounts for things.

       Did I tell you that B----- is thinking of going out of state for graduate school? (Graduate school, that's something adults do, not people such as us...) Silly as it sounds, I'm incredibly proud of him - this is the boy who wrote an essay for English class on how strong his need for the familiarity of home is, who publicly acknowledged the fear of homesickness that held such sway in his life.

       But at the same time, it reminds me of how little I know him now, so many things about him are quite opposite from the brilliant but shy boy I once figured I was in love with... I don't even know if he's had a girlfriend yet or not. Something in him, though, comforts me that his center will always be the same B----- I've always felt comfortable with, who I can so easily chat with about the most inane things.

       I wonder if he feels the same about me, if he wonders who I've become?

       Do I even remember who I was when we were close?

       I've been so many people to the world around me, all of them in conflict within me, whichever ones not let out gnawing from the inside of my skin...

       But I wonder who those around me see?

       Oh but enough of this, when I'm alone and all around me things are so quiet and empty, my thoughts paint the walls in bold strokes, colors lurid and too bright. Nightmarish figures thrown up larger than my insignificant life loom over my dreams and waking.

       Still... I remember when I moved, back in middle school, and my friends passed around a farewell banner for everyone they could find to sign. It still hangs in my room at home, the tears which fell on it during the long drive to a new home now trapped beneath plastic in an uncompostable remembrance. On the back, in large rounded letters, spills a plea perhaps only partially understood by the thirteen-year old hand which relayed it:

              Don't ever change.

What is it that makes a person, what is it I shouldn't change? And I can only grow and learn more, I can't take away the things I've thought.

       But I was going to stop this, I should start a diary again, instead of journalling it out in letters to everyone.

       It's so quiet here, in the sort of way that you're scared to disturb, the softness of the air seems as much a part of the rooms as the worn floorboards... as if the house long ago said everything it needed to, and is now resting, letting memory fill the space of words.

       Thank you for bringing up R.E.M. on the phone the other day though - if anything's right to gently re-fill the atmosphere here, their music would be it. I'd been on a Smiths kick again, but I'd listened to the cd too many times without relent, and it... I hesitate to say that it's too social, it's The Smiths, half the point is loneliness in even crowds, but its still too closely tied to social situations, relationships and people and perceptions for a place like this. Too specific; I need something that will expand to encompass both the tangible world and that of memory. Not to put R.E.M. on too high of a pedestal (though they would certainly deserve it), but for me, at least, this suits. Their "Out of Time" and "Document" albums are inextricably tied to long car rides, Mom mopping the kitchen floor, summer evenings drying the dishes, and approximating the non-lyrics of "End Game" as Mom left to do the week's grocery shopping, while we tried to keep out of Dad's line of sight - if he didn't see us, he couldn't tell us to help him bring in more firewood for the winter which seemed much farther away to us than to him.

       I see the brightness in that girl's eyes in old photographs... and still, sometimes, in an unexpected reflection.