I remember early memories, although I could not arrange the happenings in chronological order. Sometimes, I cannot call them forward, already consciousness obscured by louder, closer memories. Or they choke me, standing in the mirror, darkening my childhood. The best way to impart these tiny glimpses would be as a wave, it would crash upon you, you would know me at once as easily as blinking. A psyche shaped from the moment of cognition slips through microscopic cracks in your perception. You will never know me or my motives, as they appear cloudily, without shape. Unfortunately, life has no answers, no solved mysteries, even the tiniest atoms change under scrutiny, under light, in shade, in direction. We wisp through air, collecting thoughts in our net, and we think we own them. In all actuality, they compose us, they sculpt us with little care and we petrify in time, growing ever smoother to the touch. Even smooth marble bustles when scrutinized closely, set beneath scientists' gaze, and ever-magnified. Knowing a person is stabbing at jello with intentions of consuming; the more we stab, the more liquid jello becomes, warmed through that friction.
I try not to touch my memories, but view them as fish in an aquarium--they belong to another time and person and to no one, for that person exists in no palpable terms.
***
I move frantically in the womb, from side to side. The doctor cannot check my heartbeat for the motion. "Let us assume the heart's beating!." Haha. This memory belongs to my 25 year old mother and possibly a military doctor. I believe it, because adults do not lie or embellish. Mothers nurture, protect, shape, and resent not one moment of motherhood. I also believe this rendition of fact, shelved among minor and major memories because as I write, I tap and shake my feet, the minute movement of theis pen only stifles my incessant need for thought movement--I move through this air as that placenta. My feet flex and shake because I am not moving, or because I lack potassium, or because of poor circulation, I suppose. Imagining that fetus in the womb marks my birth with some extraordinary importance for my mother. I, not merely the miracle of life, a hyperactive infant genius capable of expanding, contracting, rolling--a baby gymnast, an escape artist, a spectacle even before birth. Who knows what pocks my brain so early? I, destined for the fast track? The fast track, thrust upon me with first diapers? Coddled and praised before escaping her vagina, and devoured by love and expectations?
I think upon my upbringing, remembering, resenting but never grasping, my lot or place amongst the now family of six. If I could hold my life between two fingers, I could manipulate the events and create something...different. How could I know what to change once holding it, dissecting the movement of it? Instead, view the sculptors as people, lined up in a crowd, hacking chips out of surrounding persons who sculpt them in turn. Raw materials fly in every direction, landing and fusing with intentional creations. Clawing my place out of the ruckus, viewing the chaos, I admire the handiwork of my fellow sculptors. I don curiosity and intelligence, understanding and empathy--enough to paralyze forward motion. We create and mold each other. You have caused my thoughts and mirrored others. We feed off and mimic those who feed and mimic. We, each other, the apes that remember.
I could not change my past and tolerate my present at once. Accepting the totality of my life in one swoop opposes despising my now: the product of years of fastidious labor by every surrounding and inclusive element. I, still molded, stand forged from a still forging fire. I am all important, a cog and time at once. To understand my childhood is to understand my parents. This would take an understanding of their childhood, and so forth, forever. I do not have that sort of time, I would need to describe the history of mankind. Instead, my parents do and are. We and they, blameless in conspiracy, act and react accordingly.
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