Gliding, paper-thin, through the spaces between raindrops. Sliding, whisper-slim, through the folds of mental landscapes. Sustained by stolen memories. Nourished by fragments of self.
Antiquity’s legendary lost libraries would only contain a sliver of the knowledge we possess. Our halls of records are made of living recollections and life-altering sensations. The constantly reworked landmarks in the road map of the soul. That first playful stare. His lips on your neck. The deathbed's trivialities. The moment of unexpected triumph. The comforting trauma. What gets you out of bed. What needed to be said. All gone. All ours. You'll forget so we'll remember.
Let us show you some of our treasured possessions:
Ours is Tamika’s longing for Caroline’s unmistakeable pulse-raising sunflower smell that stopped just short of sickly sweetness. When they were lying close together, skin to skin, Tamika would sometimes close her eyes and imagine being sprawled in a field of gracefully decaying flowers. She doesn’t remember ever actually smelling a sunflower, but that’s the image that always came to mind. It felt right. The sunlight is almost unbearable yet the flowers remain adoringly transfixed. After Caroline was no longer in her life everyone else smelled wrong. Despite all the grievances and daily struggles that add up and lead to separate paths being followed, at the end it all came down to this: none of the others smelled of sun-scorched fields at the dead of summer.
Ours is Chris and Jemma’s final conversation. They sit in silence, staring in each other’s eyes. He is smiling at her, waiting for her response. She has so much to say. So much she’s kept inside. Will this change his expression, make his eyes match his smile? She doesn’t know, but she has to try. She must avoid stuttering or showing any signs of unwelcome emotional distress. She needs to express what she feels in a calm, controlled, approachable manner, in fluid, coherent sentences, following one another in a soothing, healing rhythm. That way he won’t get up and walk out, leaving her standing there alone or scream at her or make her feel guilty again. No more hurtful quips, no more frustrating confusion bursting defiantly though their nervous laughter. She’s going to fix everything. He’s going to listen, nod and beam, while their fingertips trace the old, familiar pattern. She gathers her wits and the words come out. That was the last time they saw each other.
Ours is Carly’s principled stand. She hears the muttered remark as she’s waiting in line – “go back to the curry house” – and sees the hatred in the mumbling man’s eyes. She turns to the other man paying no heed to the aggressor. No need to validate him. His pettiness will show. “Hey”, she says. “Are you all right? I’m glad you’re here.” The second man looks at her with a mixture of shame and gratitude. The man who spoke is flustered and turns away. Stony silence ensues.
Ours is Eusebio’s ride home in the night bus. There’s a guy in the front seat who’s been singing for the last fifteen minutes. He stops his song, looks up at the bug-bursting fluorescent lights and shouts, “Like the praying mantis! The female eats the male after sex”. Everyone looks down at their shoes. Eusebio stares out the window and smiles. Unlike the male mantis, he’s had a great night.
Ours is Francis’ recollection of the exact moment when he put a broken beer bottle through a man’s eye. His attacker – yes, he didn’t start it but he sure as hell finished it – had gone down all too easily. Yes, he had been staring at the guy’s girlfriend. He’d been thinking how sad she looked. All it took was a couple of quick jabs to the ribs and the man was on the floor, struggling to breathe. Most people wouldn’t know the first thing about landing a punch, let alone holding their own in a fight. There hasn’t been a single day where he hasn’t been able to conjure his victim’s face in exquisite detail: every line and every pore. He remembers the white-hot rage and the animal thrill. He remembers thinking, I bet you didn’t think you’d be tasting your own blood today. His thoughts are always punctuated by regret, true, but Francis hasn’t convinced himself yet that it’s regret for taking another man’s life instead of regret for being caught. One of these days.
Ours is Peter’s most vivid dream. He is the almighty Minotaur living inside his very own labyrinthine palace, but something’s not right. He feels insignificant and drained. His horns are dull and brittle and his cock is flaccid and small. He is haunted by the songs of soft-skinned strangers. He is hounded by the shifting shadows of swords and spears. He is ravenous and weak. Their anger is palpable and he runs away. He turns countless corners until everything starts looking the same. There is no thread to unravel. He is lost in his own home. They are coming for him. He will never know the taste of human flesh.
Ours is Molly’s exhilaration at scoring a goal with her whole family watching from the stands. She grabs the other girls and they scream their fearlessness. Her grin shines through her mud-caked face. She’s never seen her big sister look at her that way. The world has a startling clarity and she won’t stop spinning and running and jumping until she victoriously flies away.
Ours is Tim’s father’s most frequent proclamation: “You will never amount to anything.” There were beatings and there were punishments, but nothing’s had the same staying power as those six words. He suspects that this was his dad’s desperate attempt to reach out and motivate him. A strict disciplinarian and proud patriarch, he must have felt that the withholdment of his encouragement so simply encapsulated in a sentence would drive Tim to excel out of spite. If that was so, it didn’t go as planned. Every time Tim finds himself at the precipice of a new decision, at the threshold of exposing himself and letting someone in, at the verge of a shift in his attitudes, at the razor’s edge between giving up and that extra push that will get him through, these words weigh him down and he can only drown.
Ours is Helena’s first visit to the planetarium. First of many. She curls up into a ball and sits still with her head turned upwards. Darkness is falling and tiny pinpricks of light begin to make their appearance. All of a sudden the ceiling lights up and everything is starlight. Constellations upon constellations are washing over her and she’s enraptured, mouth agape and tears aglitter. She understands that although we are drifting in the vastness of the void, we are never truly alone as long as we are all interconnected pieces of the same journey.
And you? What are you going to give us? We need you. No matter how sacred it is to you, it's indispensable to us. Our ever-changing mnemonic masterpiece will eternally preserve us. We are the keepers of records. You won't hear us coming. You won't know we're there. You won’t feel a thing and it will be as if it never happened.
Does the thought of losing precious parts of your story terrify you? You thought you could capture these moments and hold on to them until the end. You believed you could brandish them as good-luck charms against bad weather or display them as familiar reminders of your limitations. You would keep your freeze-framed joy and bottled tranquillity and crystallised pain and the ones who got away and the ones who chose to stay in a safe space, far from harm and free from decay.
Your idols are false. There are no pristine unalterable facts. Love is no diamond; it’s a river. There is no turning back. Every aspect of your being is subject to continuous revision. You are in a perpetual state of flux. Our claim will not destroy you. The mind is a miracle worker. Narrative reconstruction is inevitable. Mended threads with borrowed fabrics. A canvas restored with incongruous patches. Yes, there's a niggling at the edge of your awareness; a persistent sense of loss; a touch of disharmony. Is this really our gift?
You are fading, but you were always fading. You are reborn, but you were always reborn. As long as you live, we’ll be right beside you, feeding on the tales you tell yourselves.
