Autobiographical Memories

Would the world be different without photographs, or would we simply replace those images with other charged idols, like clothes, coins, or glasses? What difference would that make to our preserving of the imagined, remembered ghost of a person? These relics will recede from the table, I realise even as I draw comfort from the shrine, just as the grinning lady in my other family is no longer at our table, even in conversation. I wonder if she is in the thoughts of the man I watched, brave, as they told her story; a man I already feel receding himself.

Boxing Day was always the same: our grandparents arrived at our home which was now strewn not with paper but with things we had received. They pretended to be interested in my toys while I pretended to understand what was being discussed: it was one such day (perhaps not actually Boxing Day) when I thought we were talking about Hong Kong but it was actually the Dordogne; or perhaps the other way round. Such mutual pretence is more sophisticated among adults, yet still I feel that I am there for entertainment rather than conversation: but is there really a difference?

The smell always touched us when we entered the hall and joined the long line of hungry children. We were pleased if there were burgers (the message was passed along the line), but now I cannot believe that those tiny discs of chewy meat in buns, dropped onto plastic trays, nourished us at all. I waited, and in my memory it seems like chance dictated whether I would offend some grown-up, in those days when the history of everything I had done and said, with genuine feeling, followed me and forged my reputation as the cheekiest boy in the school.

Whenever I have seen badgers, there has been blood. First, the father and son (I assumed) tore pieces from each other on my parents’ patio: we scared them off, and never saw them again, although we later heard them bashing each other’s brains against the garage door. Then, today, I saw a perfect corpse in daylight, having never seen a badger in this area. This thing and I have lived in mutual ignorance; and how many will not even see my body when it dies? This evening, the corpse had vanished: perhaps special people from the Council took it away.

Would it have been better to leave early than to snatch a piece of Handler’s Adverbs in the morning, rushing afterwards to work; or would this sensible option have left me impoverished? “Impoverished” is the kind of word writers use when reflecting on the semi-conscious feelings that, when they are written about, are inflated, and, like other things you inflate, become fragile and too big. I have often called myself arrogant, perhaps only to defend myself against that charge from others. In writing, do I really seek to know myself, or impress others with clever memories I sort of had?

“He’ll probably go home and write a poem about it,” commented my teacher; so I did. I expressed my sadness in a piece that everyone except me and an honest friend loved. Back then we convened, virtually, and the thrill of writing something was superseded by the glee of refreshing the page and seeing a new comment; which was itself supplanted by disappointment when the page stayed the same. Eventually, the pages stopped changing, until I shamefully obliterated my past attempts, reversed the publication process. Now they are private again, except for traces which might last in former friends’ memories.

For once I performed a proper romance: jumped in somebody else’s cab, waited in the car park trying to ignore two boys kissing in the shadows, caught the coach to London and awaited the first train, proud of my gesture. Somewhere between London and Brighton, the next day began like a scene from a film, and I imagined her still sleeping. Later narratives called this a turning point, when my priorities settled and the perfection of sleeping by a warm and grateful body supplanted other concerns. I do not tell that story anymore, but I will never forget the warmth.

Waste disposal malfunction. Body functioning incorrectly. What now feels like the interruption of a honed system was once a weekly routine: fatigue was tackled by glucose; only the first taste was sweet, then pasty chocolate clung to my teeth and soda stung my throat while I ignored the sensation of malady. Sitting on the toilet, watching the lock on the door at the end of the long bathroom, hoping it will last, were familiar feelings. Now, I am healthy, and these morning occurrences in a much smaller bathroom are part of the rare days when I pretend to be reckless.

As I clean the glass in my bright home, the stale smell of alcohol recreates a dark memory of my grandparents’ home, which was all the darker the last time I visited it, and sat in a dirty bedroom while my grandmother lay like a grotesque monarch and devoured the chocolates we had brought. I probably knew then that soon she would be dying. Our Boxing Day routine was over; and now it seems impossible that the grinning lady in the photograph and the gorging monarch were part of the same life, or that either was ever alive at all.

The sweetness in the bowl comforted, despite the conflict I had suffered. My outer layers relished the taste, while my innards nursed the consequences of severe talking. The pineapple piece passed from my tongue to the back of my mouth, and somewhere, there, it passed. Now that the sweetness had gone, my troubles returned to the front of my mind. She passed in the doorway, and my plot to mend things with soothing words departed. In my stomach I could feel the physical presence of the swiftly eaten breakfast, and the other pain – severe, untreatable, once avoidable but now irreversible.