If you lost memory of everything, how easily would you be able to reconstruct yourself? Do you prefer to leave traces of yourself everywhere, or to go through the world traceless?
They both have their merits: being traceless is pretty cool because you can reinvent your identity as much as you want. On the other hand, leaving a mark (like this post I’m writing right now) means you’ve made a connection and put a little of yourself out into the world. Maybe I’m just getting older now, but that idea of disseminating myself has become more appealing. Is it a need for companionship? My biological clock, maybe? I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s just me, though.
i prefer to do both at once. going to a strange place, with strange people, and act wild and free. to grin at people as they walk by, skipping everywhere i go. or dipping my feet in a public fountain. sometime paiting people in finger paint, as they sit on a park bench. little things that would strike most as strange, but that are truely me. and then to simply melt into the background, so that they will forget my face, but never forget my actions. so one day when they’re feeling as though the entire world is following one tightly conformed line and that they can never truely be themself, they’ll remember the figure running through the mall barefoot, singing Dilly Dilly, before collapsing under the skylights staring up into the sun.
I try to make sure most of the things I leave behind and control could have many interpretations. I have a table covered in things like this: four different colored ribbons form different sources, a pile of things that are shiny and end up with me at the end of the day, about fifty year old to-do lists that are folded into each other, and things that belonged to other people who I have never known that I found including a small sticky note that says “Pain is often egocentric.”
I remember an Italian woman with pink high heels perfectly, how she winked when she left. What on earth did she look like? I couldn’t tell you now, only that I could not look away.
I often think of this boy in a train station. But only that he had a lovely smile, and a cardboard sign that read, “Be Happy :)”. And I remember that I was.
“One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way–will they think kindly of us? Will they remember us with a kind word? And I wish to God I could think so.”
Some prefer to forget.
They both have their merits: being traceless is pretty cool because you can reinvent your identity as much as you want. On the other hand, leaving a mark (like this post I’m writing right now) means you’ve made a connection and put a little of yourself out into the world. Maybe I’m just getting older now, but that idea of disseminating myself has become more appealing. Is it a need for companionship? My biological clock, maybe? I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s just me, though.
i prefer to do both at once. going to a strange place, with strange people, and act wild and free. to grin at people as they walk by, skipping everywhere i go. or dipping my feet in a public fountain. sometime paiting people in finger paint, as they sit on a park bench. little things that would strike most as strange, but that are truely me. and then to simply melt into the background, so that they will forget my face, but never forget my actions. so one day when they’re feeling as though the entire world is following one tightly conformed line and that they can never truely be themself, they’ll remember the figure running through the mall barefoot, singing Dilly Dilly, before collapsing under the skylights staring up into the sun.
‘She’s asking them all to remember,
Making sure they will never forget…’
(Aztec TwoStep)
I try to make sure most of the things I leave behind and control could have many interpretations. I have a table covered in things like this: four different colored ribbons form different sources, a pile of things that are shiny and end up with me at the end of the day, about fifty year old to-do lists that are folded into each other, and things that belonged to other people who I have never known that I found including a small sticky note that says “Pain is often egocentric.”
I remember an Italian woman with pink high heels perfectly, how she winked when she left. What on earth did she look like? I couldn’t tell you now, only that I could not look away.
I often think of this boy in a train station. But only that he had a lovely smile, and a cardboard sign that read, “Be Happy :)”. And I remember that I was.
They just left reminders of how good life can be.
From Uncle Vanya:
“One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way–will they think kindly of us? Will they remember us with a kind word? And I wish to God I could think so.”
Me too.