70. Forgetting

Probably nobody has ever remembered any event or person, or even object, completely. What I’ve never understood is why anybody tried.

What I understand even less is when people try to make a scene, recollection or piece of furniture seem older and more enshrouded in a gauze of mist than it already is. All those commercials that were shot in grainy black-and-white when film, video and any number of other could reproduce and store the colors paraded in front of them. Why cloud up a clear vision of a day? Why make houses and the things in them seem even more weathered than they actually are?

Mother never talked about the past—hers or anyone else’s. Not even mine. But it seemed that everyone, except her and Adam, who spent more than five minutes with me tried to get me to talk about what was gone, what they could never experience.

Or they tried to wipe out my recall: something they could no more do than to remember their own lives. We’ve all had doctors who told us the needles they stuck in our arms didn’t hurt, or teachers or other adults who told us we weren’t hurt after some bully—or the adult in question—punched, kicked or shoved us.

The result—at least for me—was always the same when any adult condescended or simply lied: contempt, on both sides. Likewise for anyone who tries to blur an already blurry picture. Even the ones who really believe they’re trying to ease my pain, in the end, earn my anger because they’re trying to blunt the edge of my recollections.

By the same token, I don’t try to recall everything, everybody, every moment. Even if I could, I couldn’t keep them, just as I can’t take every article of clothing I’ve ever worn with me. It’s one of the first lessons you learn when you can’t stay some place.

And the moment you begin to move, from necessity, the faces, the voices, the pieces of a house, all disappear into a blur. Or they lie submerged, bubbling through the cauldron of your dreams you don’t remember in the morning.

67. Memory of a Season

It still amazes me how little’s changed here. Sure, the only people remaining from the block as I knew it are in this room now. If you’re one of those people who believes that any neighborhood is its people, then you’d think that the place I knew ceased to exist long ago, perhaps when I left this block. You’d be right, in a way, I guess.

When I think of change, I’m not thinking about which houses have disappeared and which ones have been built, or what stores opened and closed, or what kinds of cars are parked around here. To tell you the truth, I don’t recall many of the places, at least not exactly. I’m not completely sure—except for the house where Adam lived and the one where mother and I stayed—which ones were here and which weren’t. Maybe it’s just as well: I’ve never had attachments to rooms, furnishings or architectural details. Good thing, too: When you have to move from one place to another as often as I have, sentimental attachments are the spindly heels that can break under you as you step up onto a curb.

But then there’s something else I recognized as soon as I got here. Some may call it a “feeling in the air.” It has to do with the light, which is the only thing that truly defines any place. No matter where I’ve woken, I’ve always known where I was—or, at least, where I wasn’t—by the light of the place.

The light on this block, even though it changes through seasons, cannot be mistaken for any other. The kind I recall most clearly seems to’ve begun today, or within the past few days. The sky is overcast, but the air is not completely gray: It’s been tinged by shingles and painted wood that’ve just begun to show splinters that were hidden by summer shadows. The day is also tinged with flecks of rust escaping from crumbling bricks.

In other places, they call the season with this light “autumn,” and it’s pretty. Here, it’s fall and it’s not melancholy, not sad. It just is, and everybody knows that winter—with or without snow—follows. And the gray, the white, will fill the street, the alleyways and ground between the houses like ash. When it clears away, some of the people—the women—you saw during the fall will sit on stoops, or scrape and poke little patches of ground around their houses. And sunlight will glare off pores of skin—faces, then arms and sometimes legs—newly uncovered. For what seems a brief moment, the faded paint and flaking bricks fill your eyes with echoes of colors struggling to rise from gaps of soil between slabs of concrete.

This cycle of light, my most vivid recollection, is now the only reason I could ever have to return to this block after mother’s gone. And I’m sure it’ll never change.