proximity to memory

Encapsulated within the thinnest membranes, fragile layers of memory, of emotion, so close to where we stand.

The proximity to memory: the indeterminate distance to our past. A child's hands outstretched in time, grasping the shapes of light. Light, coloring in the walls of a familiar hallway, consuming its length, its form.

The exact length of our hands outstretched, divided by floors measured by uneven ceramic tiles. Tiles molded from the softest clay, the changing patterns of a pixelled past. That it was once a part of us. That it is still a part of us. We are mere parts and processes, pulled passages from children's fables, underlined by touch, by voice, reciting syllables instead of words, sounds so close to song.

To remember: the circuitous path to an alternate route. Unbroken lines that lead us home. Homes housed only in dreams, waxy, colored lines that outline the forms of dwelling. And we are colored in through sleep. We dream back to who we are in times past. We are defined by the amorphous shapes of a scribble-coded language, numbered shapes that we forgot to color in, again. We are unfinished coloring book ending. We are prince and princess, awaiting a child's reinterpretation of reality's biased color scheme. We are hands that cannot stay within the allotted space of predefined figurines. We are torn pages of mismanaged markers.

dreaming home

picture by Amy Dover





In that moment of time, where time itself had a different name, named after all the places we have been; and in one instance time was even named after you. We moved back into the old house that we grew up in, displacing our childhood within our minds, even then we contemplated shedding the skin that we had held onto for so long.

I stood in one place for a long time, yet movement was for me somewhat internal, divided by the immensity of what memory cannot recall, and my body felt as though gliding along one of those moving sidewalks that you often see at airports. As a child I avoided getting on that shifting ground that made my stomach cringe as if riding a roller coaster. I wanted only to stay in one place, to be able to ground myself as a tree does, my roots delving deeper into the soil that I first learned to walk upon.

In the beginning, when the last of our belongings were carried out of our home, I remember my mother overworking herself as usual, trying to clean the dust that had settled over 16 years. This was the beginning because I didn't want out our home to be an end, to be placed alongside a punctuatory mark that denoted the last of my mother's tired breath. A small dot that could not be erased. In Japanese, the end of a sentence is marked by a small circle. Encasing emptiness within its constricted space. A line that circles and meets where it began.

Years later, every time I visited Lubbock I would drive by our house. And just before I turned the corner I would hold my breath, unsure if I would start crying or just stay silent and drive slowly as I usually do. All the small changes that I wouldn't even really notice. The color and subtle shape of the bush that aligned the doorway sidewalk. Maybe even the color of the house itself. The window where I snuck out of as a teenager, to stay out late and vandalize public property with spray cans and skateboards.

We didn't really move back into that house. Only I did, secretly, once a month or so within my dreams. A recurring dream with a different narrative. Different characters and different endings. Only the house stayed the same. My subconscious mind constructing dreams out of everything I lived through. Placing pieces on a moving sidewalk, a long extended walkway moving backwards against time, stretching so long that I am unable to see where it all goes to. Yet even standing still at the entrance of my dream, I know that at the end is our home, with my mother busily moving boxes around as usual. But just this once, she is moving them back inside.

night lights and whispers

the vicarious voice of whispering wrongs. right angles of encoded language. her language. transliteration of time. topographical lines of touch. drawn through the sound of frequencies divided.

borders marked by silence: unanswered phone calls. deleted voicemail messages. ignoring auditory hallucinations.

intermixed personas of mythological beasts. headless mannequins reciting prayer. counting numbers in a foreign dialect. casualties of an aesthetic misunderstanding.

cellophane covered secrets. the surface of sound, carrying with it the floating lanterns of our childhood dreams. hands smaller than our own, grasping the remnants of a fading light. a firefly sigh. a whisper.

a broken night light. still transfixed to the walls of our bedrooms. the only thing left in an empty house. the faint outlines where bookshelves used to be. tracing its shape behind our eyelids. the dotted outlines of furniture. fragments of our fathers' footsteps. movements that defined a life.