For the First Time
You know what’s really alarming? When we can’t remember what we last said, or did, or wrote, watched, read.
“You’d better get used to it,” they all say at the half century mark.
Over this last five years or so, I’ve written a lot short essays. They kind of just come to me. In the morning. Over a cup of tea or coffee. Nothing of great import. And you know what scares ? That I’m going to sit down and write something, post it, and have one of you pop-up in the comments and say.
“Hey big fella, you posted this three years ago.”
Now, there’s hope for me yet. Maybe all of you suffer the same syndrome and won’t remember the piece from the last time. Still, the thought haunts me this morning as I consider writing about the newspapers piled up on the dining room table, ours the last household clinging to old world order. The printed word. All the news fit to print. Feels like I’ve covered this ground. Know what I mean? The good news — this all creates an endless loop of possible themes to be explored.
The same thing seems to be happening when Mary and I sit down to watch a movie.
“I think we’ve seen it,” Mary says during the trailer.
“I don’t think so,” I respond, not at all sure myself.
Mary blurts out the plot or ending, and poof, we can’t watch because now we know how it ends.
“Are you sure?” I ask unconvincingly.
“No,” she says with a smile.
The best part of this syndrome? We can watch movies we’ve seen and feel like we’re enjoying them for the first time. Same with books. No need to buy another one.
With all this forgetting going on, I’m guessing this phenomenon applies to people and places as well. A world entirely new to me. My own reverse Ground Hog Day. Friends and acquaintances become newly minted strangers to be rediscovered, only in this movie I’m the clueless one. Covid accelerating the affliction.
“Just keep smiling,” I think. “Pretend you know the various people you run into.”
When I re-read some of my posts from four and five years ago, I wonder who penned them. They say typing fails to commit information to memory in the same when hand-writing does. I read these pieces as if written by a stranger, not my recent self. This a bit disconcerting, and the root of the problem. Do we have a finite number of thoughts and ideas, and it’s just a matter of when one will cycle back around?
Today, I choose to write in defense against writing something I’ve previously noted, as if a piece like this will serve as early warning, as stake in the ground marking when time stopped being linear.
Think before you post.
Search when you tag.
Be as you were.
Maybe I need to catalogue the set. Maybe people write books to keep thoughts in one place, between hard cover, to keep an eye on their ideas, like you would your kids. Thoughts left on the shelf for safe keeping, dog in the yard, money in the bank.
The book I write will have been written before, by me, of that I’m quite sure. Written in these posts, though the book will feel new and fresh when I sit down to write it. Flow right out onto the page the way so many describe the process. Big Magic!
“Let it rip,” they say. “The story should just stream out onto the screen.”
“Ideas float around in the universe, waiting for writers to express them,” they say.
“Open yourself to the possibility, and the book will come,” they say. “A thousand words a day.”
Oh, those words will arrive, because they’ve been here before. Like the recycled paper I’m reading today’s news from. Did I mention that we still read the newspaper, though the type seems to be getting smaller.
