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Ever notice how you'll sit around reminiscing with friends and family about certain events and they look at you all funny and say, "That's not how it happened." Doesn't that just make you sit back and wonder if your whole life has been a lie because of your faulty memory skills? I mean, I've come to terms with my Swiss cheese brain (Kids: Just Say NO To Drugs!!) but it can still get pretty annoying.
This next exercise is geared towards accepting and deriving creativity from what you DON'T remember.
Goldberg suggests,
"Non-memories may involve parts of the past you have difficulty recalling [and] may include what has been absent from your life."Ready? Play along with me...
Room To Write Activity #3: I Don't Remember
This time, begin with the phrase "I don't remember" and fill up a page...I don't remember when it was that I got my first TV. I only know that it allowed me the freedom to disappear from what I considered to be an overbearing life. I could escape to the Eastland School for Girls or be a nurse during the Vietnam War or marvel at the luscious beauty of Sophia Loren during the late-night viewings of foreign films on Channel 13. I watched TV until programming would go off the air- back when television stations took a break from programming- with little-to-no regard for my mind and body's need of rest and relaxation. I watched The Mets play, I watched ABC Afterschool Specials, I gorged on Channel U68 for doses of Swan's Crossing, Degrassi Junior High or Video Music Box. This picture box became more important to me than family, schoolwork and sleep. I don't remember when this TV came into my life, but I can trace the downfall of my productivity and ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships to its arrival.
See? Piece of cake! Now you try- leave it in the comments or keep it to yourself. Either way, happy writing!!
*smooches...hoping to inspire a writer or two today*
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wouldn't it be nice if we ALL got published? then we can be the snooty members of The Jaded Empire!
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1 comment:
You inspired two in me so pardon the length of the post ...
I don't remember when my love of books and reading began. According to my mom, the first book I read was called Kitten Kat. I still have it; it's wrapped in plastic and falling apart but there's my name, written in my little girl handwriting on the inside page.
When I still had a bed time, I was allowed to stay up past it as long as I was in bed and reading. I would purposely read til my eyes were heavy because I felt like such a big girl, staying up so late.
When it was time to declare a major, I wasn't sure what to do so I asked my mom. "You like to read and write," she said, "so how about English." Of course! I couldn't get enough of any written word any professor threw at me.
When it was time to find a "real" job, I turned to my mom again and she suggested publishing. It's true what they say in the industry, you do it for the love not the money. I could get paid tons more working for a magazine but, to me, it's just not the same. I might have crappy days and even crappier bosses but the magical take shelves (you can literally take whatever you want from them, for free!) and the summer Fridays and the smell of the written word all around me makes everything better.
To this day, every book that I open is read literally from cover to cover ... copyright page til the very last word. I also still smell every book I crack open. Yes I do. They all smell a little different but they all smell fabulous.
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Your Swiss cheese brain got me to thinking ...
I don't remember my first head injury but it was the beginning of a long history for this Swiss cheese brain. Apparently, my dad dropped me on my head when I was a baby. I didn't start crying til after my mom frantically called the doctor. As she was telling him I didn't even cry but was turning bright red, I threw up all over her and started bawling. The doctor pronounced me right as rain.
There was the cat scratch fever around fifth grade or so. My aunt's cat literally ran up my face, leaving me in need of nine stitches. By the next morning, my head had blown up so big, I couldn't pull a shirt over my head and I hear I was not far from a tracheotomy because of it.
As soon as the stitches were out, I was playing a game called Scoot Scoot, created on a rainy day by kids cooped up inside. A modified game of tag, it involved a paint roller and jumping from one piece of furniture to another. I fell, slamming an eyebrow into a piano bench. Still remember screaming that I didn't need stitches because I'd already had them.
I drove buses in college and, one day, a truck hit my bus. I don't remember anything about the accident. I woke up in the ambulance as they were cutting off my clothes and asking me who the president was. I'd chipped a tooth, had a number of contusions, glass all in my hair, and fractured my C7 vertebra. I was a hair's breadth from paralysis apparently.
I don't remember it but, in my early 30's, I stumbled out of a bar, tripped, and face planted into the fender of a parked car. I woke up the next morning with a nick on my chin and missing most of my top two front teeth. Those were the last shots I ever took.
Last year, I had to have a biopsy on the roof of my mouth. When I told my mom what the surgeon said might have happened, she knew exactly what it was. I don't remember it but I was apparently running with part of a Tinker Toy in my mouth, fell, and poked the roof of my mouth. Scar tissue developed and, three decades later, my dentist sends me to a surgeon to make sure what she's seeing is benign.
I might have some memory problems, might forget where my glasses are when they're right on my head, but I can never say my life hasn't been interesting.
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