THE Lowly Peon

on memories and their recollection 
18 October 2009, 1:23am

my memory sucks. i can't remember people's names (which is why i call everyone "man" or, these days, "bud"), i can't remember when i need to be where (which i why i've become so dependent on my iphone), and i can't remember details of conversations i've had or articles i've read (which i why i exaggerate everything. i can't remember that you said 10% of people have stinky pee after eating asparagus, so i just say "very few" or make up some number that tries to get the point across).

so it always amazes me when something happens that makes me remember — perfectly — a feeling or an event or some other detail of my past. what amazes me even more is that sometimes it could be completely unrelated to that event.

smell: the strongest recaller

i remember driving to denver a few years back with hobbeseroo for whatever reason, and as we were going around that one turn — the one that goes up a hill to a weird phone pole that pretends to look like a tree — an oddly familiar smell hit my nose. i can't really describe it, but i nearly started to weep. stefan asked me what was going on, and i said it smelled like my ex-girlfriend, "like skin after having been in the sun for a while," i said. i'll never forget how that smell hit me in the face so hard and made me feel like i was somewhere else, even if just for a moment. in that instant, i forgot what stefan and i were talking about, why we were going to denver, or even that i was in colorado. it was like a time machine.

music: a close runner up

just this morning, the reason i'm writing this, i decided i wanted to hear who loves the sun by the velvet underground. it's on their album loaded, by far and away their best album. and within about ten seconds, i was wooshed into whole foods on a sunny sunday morning in colorado springs, eating free samples for breakfast to justify ever spending $6 on a banana (or whatever they charge for them) because it has an "organic" sticker on it. the feeling, even, of having a full sunny day in colorado springs came over me, and i was excited to go to palmer park for a bike ride. of course, it didn't take long for me to realize that i'm in hangzhou, and no longer in college. but hey, it was good for a moment, right?

the corner of your eyes: a tease

i travel a lot. think about when you first went to college, and somehow, everyone looks like someone from high school. a friend of mine (ha. see? my memory escapes me. no idea who said this, just remember the idea.) in college had a theory that there are only so many types of faces and bodies, and that when we see the correct combination, we are immediately reminded of other people we know with that combination. whatever it is, traveling makes me see people i know all the time, only to realize that i'm in a place i've never been and of course that's not the same person. anyway, when i was in houston a few months back, i saw a short cute girl with daisy's hair out of the corner of my eye, and my heart started pumping a million beats a second, i was so excited to see her and say hi. of course, daisy was on the other side of the planet, but it took me a good second or two to realize it. it was a very enjoyable second or two.

movies: a world equally removed

one reason i love movies is because a good movie will successfully make me forget anything exists outside of the reality of the movie. a movie from someone's perspective essentially makes me that guy. but then, after a bit, i remember where i am. then, years later, when watching that movie again, i enter the same world i did years before, only to have that same moment where i realize where i am. the difference is that sometimes, when re-entering reality, i enter the reality from those years before. every time i watch eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, i feel like i'm about to walk out of the colorado springs theater at dusk with the rain about to fall.

and so on...

and then there are those other things. sometimes i think my memories are tagged with keywords, and when someone mentions a keyword, that memory is pulled up automatically. (or maybe i'm just that geeky.) dreams, of course, make me feel like i'm somewhere else, but i think that's one reason why we dream. food and drinks that i haven't had in a while take me back to a fond memory involving that food or drink. for example, drinking good whiskey makes me think of drinking not-so-good whiskey with paul in galveston, thanksgiving 2007; really good whiskey makes me think of that night at whiskey's in edinburgh with wjerome before we left for st andrews earlier this year. or drinking crappy whiskey reminds me of hanging out at thousand island lake with my buddy james until 2am because we were too lazy to bring the bottle around with us anymore.

memories are weird.