Philosophy

Perhaps it's age, or it could be residue from "The Navy", maybe it's that marriage thing; regardless - you start to forget. You forget you existed anywhere other than where you are. Oh you remember where you were. Tiny apartment in San Diego, tiny scrap of corner in New York, strange smelling hotel rooms, long car trips, long flights. You can remember running around in your underwear down 5th street and getting drunk night after night at McGuire's. But do you really remember where you started?

I forget. And then someone from a past life finds their way in - or I find them. Emails from the blue, sparks of recognition, vague memories long since fogged over by...

Hmm by what?

Probably that 20th beer at McGuires to be honest.

People my age tend to complain a lot about not getting enough information about people from high school and college. I wouldn't know. I don't keep in touch with people. I guess that's not true. There are people I've emailed monthly for years and years. But they are the people who aren't interested in passing on "Christmas Card" letters. We don't talk about what we've been doing or where we're going. We exchange fantasy lives, stories, pieces of our imagination that needs to be let out - "Today I killed a bug, let me expound on the subject of insect-cide for five paragraphs"

I like that. Screw exposition and openings and closings. Free exchange of ideas...puzzling paragraphs to chew on. I talk with these people all the time...I have no idea what the hell they are doing with their life.

And then you go and get crazy and start looking up the names you can remember from high school on MySpace. It's weird, looking at profiles of people you used to know. You know you used to know them, but now they have new friends and have cut their hair. Now they have new inside jokes with their roommates and boyfriends. It feels like they've become famous. And you can jump up and down and say "I knew them when!"

Of course they aren't famous (well some of them are) but it's because someone else has claimed them as a friend...and they aren't in the circle. The outer world has invaded my memories - foggy as they are - and now what I owned is public property. This girl who for years after high school was mine, my memory, my idea, my revisionism. And she went ahead and kept living...cut her hair...grew up.

It's surreal. Which is real, which is true? My memory of us trading juice boxes or her newest blog post about the lawn service?

See, it's easier just to forget. I didn't exist before, I just am. Here I sit, in my little space, and here I always was. At least I know that's real.