february 19 umm
And then you start thinking about the 1980s. You are playing with the other kids in the basement while all the parents drink and laugh upstairs. You're at you're aunt's house. She isn't really your aunt, but your mom and her go back. Her name is Winnie. You're like, 6, so you think you're going to meet a lot more Winnies in your life. You won't. You think the same think about the name "Tammy," because you go to school with someone named Tammy. Over the next forty years you will meet one other person who goes by Winnie, and zero people who go by Tammy. Tons of Tamaras, of course, because I was alive in the 1990s, but only one Tammy. She used to do the same thing every year for the talent show.
In the basement the kids are doing regular kid things, playing with toys, roughhousing, and eating candy. Not you though. You are the coolest kid in the fucking world because you are Spider-Man. Or, rather, you're playing Spider-Man on an Atari. You don't know why but there is something really satisfying about shooting the web and swinging on it. You think about that mechanism often for years, and don't feel the same way about a video game until Prince of Persia comes out in 1989.
--
I have a really, really good memory. It's not eidetic or photographic, but it's closer than you'd think. I remember things that happened but also moods and when I reminisce I can paint those memories with accurate tone, timbre, and texture. That said, I am also missing many days, weeks, months, and years.
Yes years. When I say I used to drink, I am not kidding. Besides, time doesn't really stick when you're sad. You think it does though. You think the bad things are the things you're going to remember in Technicolor for the rest of your life, but in actual fact your brain, if it is good at being a brain, will paint over a lot of things either because they're non-essential (for instance, I recently remembered that I forgot how to tie a certain knot) or because they're too painful. Case in point: to this day I know that Winnie's husband had a great name like Morris or Edgar or something like that, but I legit can't remember what it is.
If your brain is not good at being a brain, you will have to do the work. You will have to read books and do therapy and figure out how to hack yourself. And, if you do, your brain will eventually understand when you need it to activate ghost protocol. And that's pretty cool.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass pillow
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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