are the memories i have mine, or do they belong to someone else?
i think about that a lot.
like yesterday i was driving through hollywood and i saw an apartment building that we considered moving into. i could remember the interior, and i could remember the balcony, and the sound of traffic, and the smell of new paint and new carpet, and several other details with which i won’t bore you.
but as i thought about it, i couldn’t remember if i’d really been to the place that was so clearly a part of my memory, or if it’s a memory of something liz once told me.
and she’s not here to confirm whether or not i was there with her.
but it doesn’t really matter. the memories that belonged to her are now mine, and whether or not i actually experienced all of them, well, i see it as my duty to remember them as best i can.
it’s part of my way of keeping her around for madeline.
then this:
a few minutes after passing that apartment building, i was stopped at a stoplight and found myself listening to (and for the first time ever really, really hearing) a few lines of a song called, “the country diary of a subway conductor” written by a guy named david berman for his band, the silver jews.
the lines?
“imagining places i was almost sure i’d never been & had taken to assuming were the memories of my grandfather somehow deposited in my mind. they were there and gone.”
i hear things like this and think i should just quit writing because everything i think has been thought before, and in a much more eloquent way.
i don’t even know if any of this makes sense to anyone but me.
but if you’re confused by what i wrote, read what david berman wrote.
that’s exactly what i’m trying to say.