late night musings
Lying awake tonight, first randomly remembering things from flying in the Navy, and then, amazed that I hadn't thought about them for so long, and amazed in a way that I did them at all, less randomly trying to remember more because much of it was so damn enjoyable, especially compared to my contented, but mostly unchallenging and unphysical work now.
People often remember things in which they were wholly focused on one thing very well, even years after; I was in a bad car crash once and I can still remember every second, including the mistaken sensation that I was hitting my chest on the steering wheel and then my head on the windshield (it was actually my seat belt first and then my rear-view mirror flying off the windshield and smacking me in the nugget, which is funny when you think about it that I thought that little smack was the often-fatal windshield, but I should be excused as I had very little experience until then of being in car crashes - there's another really funny part of the crash involving my dread at seeing parts of my insides on the outside, but that can wait). Now that I'm thinking about these not-often-thought-about flying memories, I can remember so well the sounds, smells, and sights, but I don't remember completely which guys I was with for each episode, and for some of them it's hard to remember even when, within a year, they happened. That bothers me a little, not the timeline, but the people, because I greatly respected and enjoyed so many of those guys, and now I can't remember exactly which things we did together. Some people are really good at rattling off stories about who they were with when whatever happened, 'you know, back in March of '89' or whatever. I wish I could do that. Because I feel like that moment and that memory of it afterward is the only thing we have to pull out later and dust off, and be content that we did something rewarding, or fun, or at least memorable; I feel like that's the only thing that shows we were alive. And, as friends lose touch and stop going over the old times I get a little afraid that those memories grow fuzzy and disperse, and that parts of ourselves are lost (the most important parts because what we remember of ourselves is generally no where near as accurate or interesting as what others thought of us).
People often remember things in which they were wholly focused on one thing very well, even years after; I was in a bad car crash once and I can still remember every second, including the mistaken sensation that I was hitting my chest on the steering wheel and then my head on the windshield (it was actually my seat belt first and then my rear-view mirror flying off the windshield and smacking me in the nugget, which is funny when you think about it that I thought that little smack was the often-fatal windshield, but I should be excused as I had very little experience until then of being in car crashes - there's another really funny part of the crash involving my dread at seeing parts of my insides on the outside, but that can wait). Now that I'm thinking about these not-often-thought-about flying memories, I can remember so well the sounds, smells, and sights, but I don't remember completely which guys I was with for each episode, and for some of them it's hard to remember even when, within a year, they happened. That bothers me a little, not the timeline, but the people, because I greatly respected and enjoyed so many of those guys, and now I can't remember exactly which things we did together. Some people are really good at rattling off stories about who they were with when whatever happened, 'you know, back in March of '89' or whatever. I wish I could do that. Because I feel like that moment and that memory of it afterward is the only thing we have to pull out later and dust off, and be content that we did something rewarding, or fun, or at least memorable; I feel like that's the only thing that shows we were alive. And, as friends lose touch and stop going over the old times I get a little afraid that those memories grow fuzzy and disperse, and that parts of ourselves are lost (the most important parts because what we remember of ourselves is generally no where near as accurate or interesting as what others thought of us).
posted by jim at 4/05/2006 01:45:00 AM
3 Comments:
For too long I took for granted the fact that I still had several entire symphony, jazz and marching band pieces memorized from high school. For whatever reason, I thought about that last week for probably the first time in a couple years, and now I can't remember how to play a single one.
ypdsvmk - I can't remember what this means.
I didn't know you were in band - what did you play?
gvdxvka - a virus known to infect British clergy
What I like better or find disturbing, nah I think that it's pretty cool actually, is the collective vivid memories of events that hadn't taken place or that I hadn't been a party to with verification by another of those events. Dad and I do this to each other once in a while. Either I'll rattle off the specifics of a transaction that occured long before I worked here or we can be working on an unusually interesting or difficult file and the next day, after having it infect our subconscious while sleeping, we can both recount events hadn't occured anywhere but in our seperate dreams. I need a vacation.
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