The Persistence of Memory

I've had this... thing percolating in my brain for ages now - I have to put it into words before it drives me mad. The timing of this post is actually really fortuitous, cause it totally ties into Hem's piece on the evocativeness of smell.

Memory, to me, is a strange beast - a cat, i think - by turns aloof and adoring. I remember the generalities - the way my Grandmother would feed me, shaping rice and curry into bite-sized balls - the cake my other Grandmother always bought for my brother & I cause she knew we liked it - but the specifics are beyond my reach. Details - what was I doing in the summer of 1993 - what my best friend in grade four looked like - are beyond me.

Daily life, however, tends to jog loose fragments of my lost memories. I reach for the stainless steel holding rail on the subway, and i remember grasping the rings on an iron gymnastics bar as I twist into a 360 degree flip. The memory holds me, and I remember the calluses I developed that year from constantly swinging on those rings - the quip flip my stomach would do as i swung upsidedown & back again - the sudden clarity of vision my new glasses gave me - and suddenly, I am back on the subway, and the TTC conductor is telling me we will soon be at Kennedy Station.

These gifts of recollection only serve to underscore how much I cannot remember - but I am glad of them nonetheless, cause they remind me of how much simpler my world used to be. The sound of a subway car pulling into the station always reminds me of the trains in Bombay, when my Mother wouldn't let go of our hands cause she didn't want us to get lost in the crowd. The rain, when it is heavy and persistent, still calls me to hold my hand out a window and revel in it. I always did that when I was younger - as being brought up in a desert country, I thought rain was the most wonderful thing since bread-and-butter. Or the other day, I passed a Tim Hortons, and the smell of the sugar reminded me of tea time at Modern High, when donuts were served, and we'd all go have some - even though I wasn't supposed to, since I brought my lunch from home. I swear, I could taste that donut from more than five years ago - but that was in a different country, and besides, that me is dead.

And what I really want to know is - is it only me who's been abandoned by her memories?