I sat in confusion on my futon resting on the hard wooden floor, embracing the cold of my room and looking at the large oak bureau with mirror and my collection of the few memories I still cherish, the ones that I cannot let go of. You gave me some pictures when you finally understood that I never wanted to cause you pain, pictures and a Chinese coin from the T'ang dynasty tied with hemp.
I hung the coin on my rear-view mirror. When I am in the midst of driving, lost in thought, I check behind me obsessively. The pictures I put on the mirror on the bureau. My reflection is framed by these tokens of memory every morning.
When I see them, on this cold day in February, I look back in your rear-view mirror when you were taking advantage of twilight's reflections and voyeuristically capturing the people in the jeep behind you: double exposure, without double exposure. I look back on the reflections of my home town through your camera: a field with tightly rolled round bales of hay, arranged in an skewed line. The sun was cascading through the clouds bathing the serenity in a lambent glow and it enabled me to understand, as if for the first time, where I come from and what has influenced me.
Remember the time when you kidnapped me? Was it the same day that you took both pictures, or just one of them? We were laughing as we made our way back on 161 until that officer pulled us over. We were nervous, but he simply smiled at us, said he understood that it was a beautiful day and was just checking to make sure we were not drunk. He told me I had to keep you in line. What a nice man.
On that day in February, the memory of these summer moments made me warm again, but I could not move. The remembering done, I was brought back to reality by the cold of my room, it is freezing and my only company, these phantasms, provide warmth only when I get lost in them. When I am found again, it is colder than it was before.
Every, single, god damned morning, when I look in the mirror, I am still boxed in by the past. Why can't I just let go?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
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