"should words be considered our greatest creation?"


-Mike Watt








Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Freud talks about "screen memories," the little things we do remember but are banal, as proxy for truly heavy moments. So then, what do I remember, and what is behind the screen?

Much relating to my grandmother's house and seasons. Seasons anywhere take on deeper color and passionate severity, such as the kind of sunshine that only comes in summer memories, that fills the sky, me as a boy half my size and that much smaller than a star. Earlier I remembered the mimosa tree in front of her house, the sentinel at the side door, how the presence of that tree in that little semicircular garden must have remade the view from her bedroom window. In time when the seed pods fell off they would litter the driveway, everything. I would peel them open to look inside, opening a letter older than an ice age. The tree is gone. I seem to recall a cloudy day, temperate enough to be outside, and we climbed in that tree. Is this a stand-in, a stunt double, for the truth? What can I truly say about memory? Is it trustworthy? Or does it run off with its own agendas, hiding thoughts, as woodpeckers store seed? A friend, or fair-weather? A square inch of sight, in literal truth to the eye, grows in actual space as the object viewed is further away.

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