A week ago we stood at the side of the road, watching each other shiver in the dark and gambling on a prayer, stranded with a flat spare tire and a dying cellphone battery. This week he curses as we drive by the gas station we had been trying to reach that night, but didn't. He curses, but I can't be angry. I don't remember being angry last week, and by next spring, the next time we'll drive past this gas station, I likely won't remember the flat tire at all. The skies were clear, the stars were radiant that night.
Attention span? What attention span? We've seen thousands of years of history that we can't remember - couldn't be bothered to remember, tell, and re-tell. Thousands of years of history, and all we really think of is here and now. Where is here? What is now? A week ago it was a piece of limp rubber, a dying cellphone and a prayer, to be forgotten by next spring. I sometimes wish I could be so shallow as to believe these words.
Sure, we can't remember where we came from or how we got here, but of the prefectly trivial we remember much too much, do we not? I'll concede that not all of the information we retain is completely useless, but surely some memories I could stand to lose. Might I not be a different person if I did not stand on a history of failure and disappointment, if my scraps of success were not peppered with sober missteps and drunken embarrassments and regrettable choices?
I sometimes dream of how things might be if I could drop my guard and simply let myself be read, rather than clutching tightly at my cards and calculating what suit to show. And then I wonder if such a thing as "Daddy's Little Angel" truly exists, if there is any woman out there who has never misstepped or disappointed. It has to be a dream - I could never be she.
No comments:
Post a Comment