Memory Map #1
the past is a vast tract the past is a cul-de-sac
- Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan Saturday mornings (Why be Jane when Jane always needs saving?)
- An emergency teacher. An accident. Plastic pants that rustle when you walk.
- At night the electric pylons emit silent rays that inflitrate all the houses and turn the sleeping children into killer robots. Only you and your sibs know to wear masks. Your parents do not make it.
- Grade Four weddings at Spook Hill
-Dreaming of swimming pools.
- Kindergarten nativity play - you are a nameless shepherd in a hessian sack
-Smurfs, Yo-yos, BMX, Stackhats, The Solid Gold dancers, Fame, Footloose, church, Clearasil, Countdown, Wham Rap!, footy, milk bars, Alpine Lights, boys named Trevor, girls named Narelle.
- Bad hair and bad jeans and crooked teeth and roll-neck jumpers. Men with beards and women whose foundation stops at the jaw-line.
-The playground after hours. Hogging the spinning pods, scratching your initials into the fibreglass with a penknife. Scratching out childhood.
- Stolen cigs and coffee marsalis. Feeling lawless, feeling liminal.
- Bad pash down at the creek.
-Frequently used symbols: hearts, stars, railway tracks, fireworks, quicksand, falling rocks, treasure, water, a safe place to camp, a kind-hearted woman, a man with a gun.
-The staying power of small hurts.
- How pressing on a bruise sometimes feels good.
-The past is a vast tract, but also, the past is a cul-de-sac.
-“everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little.” - Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
Love all this.
'Bad pash down at the creek.' - a micro story in six words.
Ooof. I was emotionally sideswiped by your mosaic of bitter-sweet instant-recognition lyrical memory fragments. Unfair to the intensity and quality of your writing to choose only a few, but . . . pash & small hurts.