27. The safest place in the world....
I used to think memory, is a safe place, a place to crawl back to and retrieve warm and fuzzy pictures of people and things. I believed it will always be there, loyal and waiting and no one will be able take it away. Not even time.
How wrong.
It turned out that my imagined safe place is more like a gathering of soap bubbles floating in the air. And while not always as colorful it is just as fragile and likely to dissolve leaving me with empty hands and a slight taste of soap in my mouth.
I used to think it is mine and being weightless I can carry it with me everywhere I go. Like a magic memory box or a cherished album.
Wrong again,
I learned that not only it is not really mine, it’s an arbitrary collection of stories sloppily glued together that keep changing depending on who I talk to.
So memory, I now know, cannot be trusted. Like a chameleon it keeps changing colors and like the bits of glass pieces in a kaleidoscope it is forever shifting to create new illusions.
Time, hypothetically my ally, turned out to be the biggest deserter of them all. Like a flawless quivering desert mirage it seemed always within reach, until alas, I sent my hand to hold on to it and brought it back empty.
Have you seen Nabokov's 'Speak Memory'? It might have a resonance for you since he too left his native land.
ReplyDeleteI think this does what it intended to do and does it well, but my taste is inclined toward the specific, the visual, the particular--not toward the poetic, so my buy-in is minimal.
We all struggle with memories, losing some we don't want to, unable to avoid some we wish we could, unable to summon some we want, and so on. But, for me, for my taste, unless I know what particular kind of problem you've faced, what memories have shifted or disappeared, there's not enough to hold me here for long.
I don't offer that as a criticism of the piece which is proof against criticism, but only as a comment on my own taste.
I didn’t think you were going to like this one…:-)
ReplyDeleteNever read 'Speak Memory' but of course you are write about this universal struggle with memories.
Speaking about liking and disliking, I had another piece I thought will fit in the “place” category but did not post it as it is really long (sort of a trilogy on my home town) and in some parts seem really annoying though I cannot put my finger on the why. Will it be OK to post it?
I'm glad that by this point you have some idea what I will like or not--because your goal is not to please me or my tastes but to write well in whatever style you choose. If I'd seen a problem with this piece, I would have done my best to point it out, but, as I said, it does what it intends to do, and that's what matters.
ReplyDeleteAlways glad to read your stuff, ariela, however long or "really annoying."
The reason it's good to know what your teacher likes is so that if you're in the mood you can discount what he is likely to say in reaction: 'Well, that's just not his kind of thing!' That is a very sensible response sometimes and a way of holding your own in the teacher/student dynamic.
ReplyDeleteWrite - right, one day I am going to get this language.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the mistake (in my first response).
I never discount what you say but yes, at times trying to hold my own and not use "pleasing" as a priority.