We Write from the Archives of Memory

I’ve been working a lot on a new novel recently, and there is actually very little I want to say about it except to note that I have found myself immersed in memories of the El Paso of my childhood, of L.A. and San Francisco, of people and events long past.  It is wonderful, but at the same time, all those memories must compete with the present, which is full, so full, of its own tasks and people and experiences.  Those things belonging to the present also enter into the story sometimes, though they must go through the filter of the past in which the story is set.  And yet, there is so much that will never find its place in this story, or any other.  They are parts of me, of my experience, that will remain hidden and as a result will perhaps go unexamined; never be fully understood.  Every one of us, if we just pay attention, is witness to a constant stream of wonder. 

     The other day I thought about the first time I fell in love.  When I was six, and in the first grade, I fell for one of my classmates, a short-haired, freckled, red-faced girl who wore pink dresses and pink bows in her short, tidy hair.  I would stare at her instead of paying attention to the teacher (I had already checked out by the first grade and would be a terrible student throughout what was left of my mercifully truncated formal education).  Each time her eyes met mine, I literally felt as if my heart and my head were going to explode.  Terrifying, that a six-year-old could feel that kind of passion!  The following year, she would chase me around the playground at school, calling me “honey” and “darling” and trying to kiss me (I suspect she was imitating the way she saw lovers behave on television, as I did not have the impression that her parents were very demonstrative toward each other).  I would run from her and complain to the teacher and other adults, but I was secretly delighted.  Because it wasn’t just about loving anymore, it was about being loved.  I also have a most vivid memory of a field day at a park that we participated in with the rest of our class a couple of years later.  By this time, we were both getting to an age where—at least at that time—boys and girls tended not to mingle. On a grassy lawn in a secluded section of the park, she ran up and tackled me, in an ostensibly playful manner.  We wrestled about rather innocently, but when we separated, hot and sweating and covered with newly-mown grass, I could tell by her expression that she now hated me—for what I will never know—but something had affected the way she felt about me: a slight, perhaps, or possibly something I had done to make her jealous, or because I had somehow changed, or because we had simply entered a new stage of life, but what was certain was that we were finished; as friends, as playmates, as associates, and as puppy lovers, forever.  The following year her parents enrolled her in a highly respected all-girl private school, and I never saw her in person again.  Years later, one of my sisters went to the same high school as she did, and I learned that she was a popular and diligent student, involved in all sorts of extra-curricular activities and held up as an example by the school administration.  She died tragically in an accident a few years later while living in England.  Some years ago, I found a seven-year-old's drawing she had given to me with the inscription, “I love you, Chalres,” among papers that my mother had saved from my childhood.  I really don’t know what the significance of all of this might be to the person I am now, but I’m sure that it somehow played a role in making me who I am.  The compulsion to write, in large part, comes from the power experience has over us; from the need to process and preserve and share our experiences.  And even the smallest experience encompasses this magic, this power.  I think of the house I walked by this evening that has a Christmas tree up year-round, and that seems to be filled with very social residents—or at least serious tipplers.  And that apartment down the street, where the residents have installed green light bulbs in every socket, so that the whole place swims in a murky jade ether.  What does all of this mean, and why would I want to share it?  I don’t have an answer.  But I share it with you, anyway.  And if you’ve read this far, I hope you don’t feel that I’ve wasted your time.