Everyone keeps asking me "how are you feeling?" To be honest, I feel just fine. Then again, I ain't doing nothin' that would cause me not to feel fine. Once in awhile my muscles in my upper leg hurt, but I suppose that is to be expected. So, that's really it...BUT, in an effort to keep this blog going whilst I toil away on the sidelines, I am going to share text from a book I started to write 10 years ago. The book is called "My 100 Pages" and it's simply a autobiographical account of me growing up. It's not quite 100 pages long (only 80), but then again I never really finished it. I'm not really sure why I decided to write this, but I'm glad I did. I haven't open the word doc in about half a decade, but it's kind of fun to glean. Here is a snippet about trying to recall one's earliest memories. I'll try and post some other parts over the coming weeks.
I remember when my sister was born and having to be dropped off at a friend's house before watching my dad speed away in the middle of the night with my mom in the passenger’s seat, en route to the hospital. Now my sister is about 2 years and 11 months younger than I am, which means that I was only 2 years and 11 months old when she was born and I remember that, so I guess my earliest memory was when I was 2 years and 11 months old. I know when I was real young, I had memories of what it was like in my house before my sister was born, but I cannot remember those memories now. Perhaps it is because they really weren’t monumental memories or perhaps it is because eventually memories simply disappear, as one gets older. Maybe if I think real hard I can remember something that happened when I was two and a half....Nope, can’t do it. Wait what about looking at old pictures? I remember when that picture was taken, or is it rather I remember looking at that picture sometime after it was taken? I certainly remember the camera that took the picture; it’s old and broken and sits inside an old drawer covered in dust. But do I remember the camera taking that picture that I was in, or do I just remember the camera from a picture taken later in my life, during a time that I can remember? I guess that is why cameras preserve memories; so you don’t have to. Is that why people take pictures, to preserve memories, or do they take them to capture a beautiful image? Or both? A photograph can’t make up for a memory though, there is so much more in a memory that a photo simply can’t grasp. Maybe there are certain smells that are associated with the memory, or maybe the day the picture was taken it was a frigid 7 degrees outside. You can’t tell that from looking at the picture. Sure you can gather that it was cold out because the person in the photograph is wearing a winter jacket, but the photograph can’t tell you how cold it is. I do love photographs though. Looking back at past Christmases, Easters and Halloweens, I see how I have grown. Some pictures I still get embarrassed about though, and I am not sure quite why. I know in some of the pictures I was close to tears for some reason or another, probably not wanting to get my picture taken for the sheer sake of being difficult. Others I look at and wonder; what was I thinking about? I know that for some reason I felt weird and strange when the picture was taken, but I am not sure why. And when I look at that picture I begin to feel different, almost awkward in a way, and I have to turn the page so that I don’t have to look at the picture anymore. I look into my eyes in the picture and wonder just what I was thinking about at that time, just what kind of person was I then, and why I was like that, and if I have changed? Then there are those pictures that were taken for no apparent reason. There are some pictures that make you feel happy inside, they make you feel as if you want to cry. It was peaceful then; back when I was young and didn't have to work, pay bills and wonder where my life would take me. Now I wish I were younger. I want to return to that mountain. I want to return to that island. I want to return to that boat. I want to return to that adventure that I remember so vividly in my mind – I want to return to that picture. But all that is simply impossible. Instead I have the picture, which enables me to venture to some degree to that moment in time where I felt so proud, so accomplished, and so free. In one of my parent’s albums there is this one particular picture that sticks out. It is a picture of an old beat up, uninhabited mansion in New Hampshire. The white shingles are peeling showing and there are no trespassing signs stapled here and there. Parked on its porch was a motorcycle, I think it was a Harley. It was surreal. I remember when the picture was taken too, I am not sure why we took it, but I liked it, so someone took it. We never figured out why there a nice Harley parked on that porch. The mansion has since been destroyed and the motorcycle is nowhere to be seen. The mansion was eventually replaced by a convenient mart of some sort before that, too, was destroyed. It is all quite sad in a way.
