transitory things moving by

I remember laying in my room, in summertime with the window open, leaning against the footboard of my bed, my head resting on the window screen. The smell of summer, the metal of the screen, the dust, indelibly etched in my memory. For no reason other than it was summer, and that was how summer smelled.

After it rained, the smells changed; the metallic tang more evident, the smell of rain drowning out the dust, taking deep breaths of rain washed world. Rain was so beautiful.



As a child life was not about time, it was about feeling. It was about happy and silly, sad and quiet. It was the feeling of the air around me. Not all the feelings I understood; I could separate happy from sad, but not sad from despondent, nor happy from manic. It made for confusion and fear – an odd cloud hovered over my house.


I think I must have been an extraordinarily clumsy child: my legs were forever covered in bruises. I apparently walked into a lot of furniture. My arms as well bore testament to my discomfort with reality, eternally bruised and covered with bloody scabs. I could not, for years, leave a mosquito bite or scrape alone; I had to pick at it. How much trouble has that gotten me into – that burning drive to pick at things best left alone.

My memory at times is amazingly accurate, and far reaching. The things I remember, I remember so clearly, like looking at a photograph, a giant bigger than life close up of crystal clear purity. But what I don’t remember – it’s like a black cat sleeping in a lightless room – I may trip over the memory, but still cannot see it.

Learning to ride a two wheeler, well trying that first time, was a scarring experience. I’d get going and wobble, my balance or lack there of was getting to me. I’d pull my feet from the pedals and put them on the ground. NO! my father would yell, use your brakes. You have to learn to ride right. Again and again, pedaling, wobbling, catching myself with feet on both sides. NO! NO! NO! There was no way I could do this, not with my clumsiness, my dearth of balance and his yelling. But there was no way to stop either. So again and again I went through the motions. Until finally, finally, I did it, I wobbled, I braked; and I fell, hard, wiping most of the skin off not only my leg, but my arm. No gushing blood, but oozing, and everywhere. Terrified, looking up, to see him, waiting for his pronouncement of failure or success. But neither was forthcoming. Just that dull blank look….the look that questioned how I could possibly be this hopeless. I gave up. I pushed the bike off me, and limped home. I hoped the neighbor kids did steal it, I was never riding it again. I still didn’t cry.


We are defined not only by our experience, but by that which we remember. We do not hold on to every memory: too many things occur each day. The passing thoughts, unremarkable encounters, petty experiences that drift through our life; they are too insignificant to even note.
But it is not by the worthiness of an event that we recall it: do you remember the way the light glanced off the water? How about the laugh escaping a stranger’s conversation as you cross paths as you are walking? And even the most meaningful of memories, is it not the details you had never before focused on that burn the deepest? In the argument that signals the end, isn’t it more than words that are shot at you, more than the air of anger or quiet resignation? It may be the stubble on his neck, above where his collar is twisted: the annoyed gesture as her hand pushes her hair off her face. Possibly it is the way the light through the window hits the clock just so. Tiny snapshots of immaterial things that make up the visual to the fragmentation of what was; irrelevant and insignificant suddenly elevated and attracting attention that was never before paid.
The memories of the river, flowing ever constant, undulating beneath the surface as unseen currents push along; separate from everything as he berates me, hisses criticism and vitriol. The raucous noises from the seagulls above, their sounds both blending and competing with the degrading sounds escaping him as he continues his diatribe. Staring with incomprehension at the shattered remains of my ceramic unicorn, as I wait for the redness of rage to clear my vision. The texture of the wallpaper in the exam room as the word “nonviable” echoes through my mind. The least of these, the most memorable; so like the human condition unfathomable.