where did it go?

It's raining today. It's dreary and hard to smile and stay awake.

I've been thinking lately about the value of writing down your life, documenting it, in pictures, and words, and oral volumes told to friends or family or strangers even. Strangers, in the right context, will listen to much more than your partner or your biff or your mom. Those people tire of our point of view, our memories, our analysis and recitations of what happened today. Which, admittedly, can be boring. Do we have to ask each other the requisite, "How was your day?" upon seeing or talking to each other for the first time? Many times I ask knowing I don't much care to hear the answer, unless something out of the ordinary happened, and I'm sure most people don't either. That's not really what we're getting at I think, when we say it; "what's up," or "how's it going," is really more like a universal "hello," and rather than requiring a response appropriate for the question, it's more of an acknowledgment of the other person. Which makes me feel better about not being especially interested in hearing that nothing of consequence happened at your work today. Maybe, though, this ritual is important; not so much for the asker, but for the one being asked. Kind of a "namaste" to their lives, their beings and existences, outside the context of us, and the action of extending our time and effort to (at least pretend to) listen to their voices, to them. It, less than the literal meaning of what we're saying, conveys the message that they are important enough, they are real enough to us, and thus we are interested in making their life part of ours for the short time it takes to hear about their day, or how they're doing, or what the fuck is new.


Multiple times today I've been reminded of something that happened in the past, a memory I've forgotten, an image or an experience that is not at the fore when I recall that time. Which is bizarre. Things that occurred within the last year, many of them, seem gone. Outside the reach of my mind. And I wonder, warily, what about everything I felt and smelled and saw and did and laughed at more than a year ago? Where is all that? Particularly in the context of traveling, which seems to take up more space in my brain and my life as the day quickly approaches when I will depart from my city and my loves, people's names (I can always remember faces), names of small towns, dates and places I went, things I did, even big things, I can't remember! I feel lost, I feel without context, I feel like I'm floating on an ocean with no land or physicality at all within sight. Gone. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing with which to give today, or then, or this person, any meaning. Which must be somewhat similar to what Alzheimer's does - it destroys the short term memory so that the present becomes an island from our past, so that our brains can't put current information into the complex network of triggers and memories and boxes and thus it just floats around, lost. Alone. Void of meaning. Without a hook to reclaim it, if possible.

And though I do not have Alzheimer's, it seems like I'm already, at the relatively dapper age of 24, missing large chunks of my past, as recorded in memories. Which is why I'm appreciating the points in my life when I've been a journaler (as opposed to keeping diaries) because I have a record, a real, hard, incontrovertible record, of what happened. Of what I did, and most importantly, what I felt when I was doing it. If you ever want a gauge of how much you've matured and grown as a person, or, I suppose, withered and wilted and immatured, read something you wrote about your life/feelings/relationships a year or two, five or ten, or decades ago, and notice how your analyses have changed, how ridiculous you sound, how you can't imagine that you ever took yourself seriously. For real? I thought that? Some things I've written are so, hmmm, little girl who thinks she's grown up, I'm almost even embarrassed to reread for fear that, because these words exist as discoverable matter, someone, at some point, might read them. I think I might explode if that happened. I wouldn't even need to know foreign eyes were perusing my journals; the force of the invasion and attendant embarrassment would be so strong it would reach me wherever I was, and my body would burst into pieces.

I'm reaching. Yesterday and the day before I physically couldn't stop writing to you, my beloved blog. Today, I all I want to do is shrug and nap.

Last night I picked up my guitar, my beautiful man was playing when I came home and ooohhhhh how I could
listen
to
that
for
years.

But at the same time I was anxious, it was heavy, because IknowIshouldbepracticingbutIhaventinsolongandnowIvelostitIllneverbeabletoplayagain. Phewww, breathe, breathe, breathe. It was a set up for failure, this reunion between me and her (my guitar), I put too much pressure on her and me and my recollection of how good I was before the hiatus, and as I put her neck in my hands and tried to hold C and strum, it felt foreign. It wasn't right. I lost it. What will happen this summer, when three months will separate my fingers (and my hard-earned callouses) and hands and arms and upper thighs from cradling the guitar, from moving with her to create glorious sound, the elixir of my life: music. Three months! It's been three weeks and already there is emotional separation between me and her, so much so that playing feels like a violation. What will I come home to? Will she be happy to have me? Am I enough for her? Perhaps she's given up on her musician and would rather be pawned, would rather live with - sing for - someone else. Or maybe I was sitting awkwardly and need to say hello to her again tonight.

I started teaching myself last June (2009), although I've had her since, ooooh, my 21st birthday (2006). I overcame an ocean of frustration with her, all the normal beginner complaints: sore fingers; inability to reach certain chords; switching chords too slowly; bar chords and power chords, ugh. I recently mastered F, but my fingers spend their time resisting B minor like dogs resist baths. B itself is an entirely different dilemma. I always ask my person, "how do your fingers do that? See! See! Mine don't reach that far! I'll never be able to play this chord. I suck I suck I suck," and he says, "no, that's just not true. I've given up before too when I got frustrated. I didn't start out knowing how to do this; it takes time and it takes practice. You just have to practice." And then, the best part: "you sound amazing. You're improving so much babe. You've learned so fast." And then I pick her up again and begin all over. The basics. My pride and joy, the F chord that sounds like it's supposed to sound. Maybe even hammering on and off the B string, if I'm feeling frisky. It's slow and fast, it's unpredictable, it's like sprinting, jogging, and walking, but you go in blind, not knowing at what pace you'll be moving when you play. Sometimes I begin and, feeling similar to the way I often do about my writing, I wonder when, and how, I got good at this one thing. Other times I wonder whether all my pride is earned, whether my memory has a glitch in it, as I stumble clumsily through my warm-up songs glad no one can hear but me.

This is the song that got me over the hump with F; it's soooooo wonderful I couldn't stop listening, I was addicted. I looked it up, happily realizing I could play (almost) all of the chords. I didn't stop practicing until I could (I was sprinting!): Forgive me by Missy Higgins.