I remember everything
I am moving in exactly two weeks and my mind is a jumble of thoughts I attempt to organize every day. Some days the sorting goes better than others. Predictably, I am thinking about every place I have lived and every life I have had. I am also thinking a little bit, truly only a little bit, about some lives I could have had but didn’t or lives I could potentially have but don’t. Then, of course, there is everything else, thoughts that seem like noise but turn out not to be, and noise that at first sounds like music but turns out to be just noise.
In no particular order, here are some things on my mind:
Knoxville, Tennessee, a life: My friend K and I are hanging out at the Pilot Light, which is a small DIY music venue in the Old City. There is sometimes a cover and sometimes not; there is a Bart Simpson graffito on a wooden lamp post out back where the dumpsters are; there is a bathroom with no lock and a bathroom with a lock; there is always warm Schlitz you can buy with two dollars from Chris or whoever else is working the bar. There is a guy on stage — he’s thin, medium-height, dark curly hair in a controlled nest atop his head — a laptop propped up on a small folding table. The laptop is playing dolphin sounds. A large beach towel, maybe pink and blue, wraps around his shoulders. He starts singing “Ave Maria” over the dolphin sounds as he takes off the towel, slowly, arms bent then stretching out gradually, corners of the towel between his fingertips, no shirt underneath. I don’t get it. I don’t have to.
Oakland, California, a different life: D and I have rented or borrowed a car to drive to Santa Cruz. It is December, not cold at all, we drive for a few hours and arrive at the beach. We sit on the beach and play the guitar and walk around. On the way home, we stop in Half Moon Bay and have dinner, shop a little. We’re broke. We haggle down the price of some silver earrings.
The other day I stepped on an almost invisible glass splinter in the hallway of my apartment. I felt it go in; I looked at my foot and saw nothing. I took another step: pain, again. I put my right foot on top of my left thigh, hopped into the bathroom, got the tweezers, hopped onto the chair in my office, sat down, looked at the bottom of my foot, pulled out the tiny, brittle splinter. Another time in my life I would’ve left it there — done nothing but worry, periodically stepping down onto my foot to check if the splinter was still there as though it could’ve disappeared without intervention through the two impossibilities of dissolving into my foot or falling out on its own. Instead, I simply pulled it out.
A few weeks ago I went to make a batch of kombucha and uncovered my SCOBY to find that it had molded. I do not know how this happened; I did not do anything differently than I have in the past. I did not feel sad about not being able to make kombucha, but I did feel sad because the SCOBY had been given to me early in the pandemic by a friend who has since moved away from Chicago, and I liked having that connection to him. Also, when I went to pick up the SCOBY, I was on the phone with someone who happens to hate kombucha, so every time I made kombucha I would think about these two people, and about that bright May afternoon walking to V’s house to pick up the SCOBY and running across the street a little mindlessly because I was both trying to find his house and trying to keep up conversation on the phone, and then walking home, SCOBY in tow, telling some stupid story about playing high school soccer. I felt really good that day.
I’ve been eating a lot more avocados lately because usually every year around May or June I remember that I love avocados and that they’re in season. I can tell whether an avocado is going to be good just by picking it up. I don’t mean ripe; I mean good. I can tell whether it’s going to have those gross brown potholes inside or if it’s going to be one of those avocados that looks ripe and soft and delicious but is instead fibrous and tough. I spend a long time with avocados at the store, and usually I either buy two — one that will be ready tomorrow and one fully hard one — or three — one that will be ready tomorrow and two hard ones. I like them to feel heavy in my hand, heavier than they look, and smooth, firm, like the flesh inside expanded to fill its skin, making the skin taut and shiny. There are things we learn without anyone ever teaching them to us.