WET CAT
Over the weekend I pulled a muscle in my neck, or pinched a nerve, or something. Maybe it happened while I was riding through the Texas hill country, craning my neck around at every curve to see the bluebonnets and redbonnets and yellowbonnets, which I know aren’t their real names, but this is what I call them. Maybe I did the damage later, while awkwardly crouched over an old motorcycle tank with a can of spray paint in one hand and a beer in the other. At one point I confused the two, and shook the can of beer instead of the spray paint. You can imagine the mess.
I have been thinking a lot about writing, and travel, and displacement, and memory — as I do. Paul Theroux wrote “It was as a solitary traveler that I began to discover who I was and what I stood for.” He also wrote, “I often think I became a writer because I have a good memory.” He differentiates between an accurate memory and a rich memory. He is in possession of the latter, as am I. I am constantly getting myself into trouble for not remembering names and faces — one too many times approaching a person to introduce myself, only to be told “We did this already.”
But ask me about eating catfish at the kitchen table in Sugarland, Texas, when I was five. Ask me about leaping fully-clothed into a pool after accidentally kneeling down in a pile of fire ants. Ask me about the every bedroom I have ever spent the night in — I could sketch them out with surprising accuracy, and, I feel, probably capture each one’s unique warmth. I have been told I have something of a photographic memory, but evidently these photographs don’t record details such as who you are, where you are from, how I know you. Thus my renown as “occasional asshole.”
Ironically, my notoriety as a “more than occasional asshole” comes from other behavior that is also linked to my memory. I fixate on the past — worry over it, rub it between my hands until my palms are hot. The past overwhelms me at the most inopportune moments — lounging at the bar of a dance hall, for instance — and I find I must physically react in order to cope: I rant, I weep, I flee.
Theroux also wrote this: “You know how much friendship matters to memory when, for whatever reason, a friend leaves the orbit of your existence. Losing a friend to death or absence or misunderstanding is not only a blow to self-esteem but a stun to memory. The sad reflection that we are losing a part of ourselves is true: part of our memory has departed with the lost friend.”
A friend or a lover, it is the same. A friend is a lover. We fall in love with our friends, don’t we? New friends are suddenly bright stars; we orbit around them, in rapt reverie. Build whole worlds out of their light. When the light is extinguished, for whatever reason, we may panic: What is this loss? Why this empty sky? The mind floods with memories and alternate endings and perplexed fury. Dylan Thomas, who you never gave a fuck about before, now rings too true: “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!”
It’s embarrassing, this sentimentality. I twist violently around like a cat on a leash to get away from it. The collar tightens. I twist and bolt and leap some more. Finally I am exhausted and panting, and raw around the neck, and I’ve probably attracted an audience — “Look at that, look at that, why do that, don’t they know?”
Of course I do! But I have this memory problem, you see — I’ll either forget you in a second or I will never be able to let you go. Fortunately I also have this backup plan where I am a writer; maybe the thrashing about will make for a good story.
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