Forgetting To Remember...Remembering To Forget
By Ron Marr (07/16/03)
We would sit outside as the dying sun painted the sky with streaked fingers of crimson and gold, watching and waiting as night descended like a curtain of wet velvet. The heavens would twinkle, the air would fill with a symphony of cricket song and the low droning of the cicadas. I remember there was a way to tell the temperature by the music of the crickets - something about counting the chirps for one minute and then adding 27 - but I don't think that's quite right. The formula has left my mind, a vague recollection of childhood lore.
It seemed we were always coming in from the fields back then. Summer was for soybeans, and there was always work to be done. The hours on the tractors, surrounded by clouds of swirling dust and a merciless heat, seemed to stretch time itself. The sole break from the boredom - traveling from fence to fence of each endless row - was the tiny transistor radio and cheap earphone which I kept with me at all times. Generally it was tuned to WHB - "71 AM on your dial" out of Kansas City. That was the pop rock station of choice in the late 60's and early 70's, and the corny words and incessant chatter of Phil Jay the Dee Jay and Johnny Dolan stick in my mind. I can't begin to tell you how many times I heard Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World" or "Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling." Enough that the lyrics burned permanently into my brain. I often wondered if WHB owned but half a dozen albums; today such repetition of bad rock is used to break the spirit of captured terrorists.
No matter...the static-rimmed voices were a connection to something far different than rural Missouri, which seemed important to me at the time but not so much now. In retrospect, I guess I've always sought connections to something other than where I am. That goes not only for places, but for people and things as well. Somehow, from a long-lost relative, I must have inherited itchy feet and a strain of wild goose. Through my veins has always coursed an insatiable need to check out what was over the next hill. Greener grass and all that rot
No matter. It was what it was and it is what it is. But on those long-ago evenings, when the day was over, after baths and a huge dinner, we would sit outside. Sometimes there was lemonade. Sometimes there was ice cream. Sometimes there were huge pitchers of iced tea sweetened so heavily that they took on the consistency of pancake syrup. These were not heavy shindigs, they were simply a restorative, a natural pleasure earned at the completion of hard days. My parents would discuss the local gossip or mull over business matters - Dad stretched out on one of those aluminum lawn chairs with the cheap plastic strapping that always seemed to fray at the edges and unravel in long curls. My brother looked at stars and thought his own thoughts. I scratched the ears of beagles and, even when very young, dreamed about the future, where I would go and what I would do.
Maybe it was a hunger. Maybe it was a need. Maybe it was a night so plain-simple and clear that it took me back in time. But a few nights ago, as I sat outside in the chilly mountain air and tossed tennis balls for the pups, I felt that same sense of fleeting tranquillity. It was a rare gift, for by my own hand life is not nearly as simple as it should be.
It wasn't this place that took me home, for after so many years of road time I develop few roots in the geographic sense, am possessed of the knowledge that sooner or later I will be somewhere else. It wasn't a person that kindled old sparks of memory, nor a scent, nor a sight, nor a sound. The feeling was just there, at first imperceptible and then bearing down like a runaway freight. I don't really know why it came, or if and when it might come again. I just know that, for a moment, there was a lack of thought. No inner voices, no analysis, no cares or questions.
For a few minutes, before my reverie was broken by distant voices and the roar of a passing motorcycle, I saw life for what it is...a tapestry that grows and tears and deserves every one of it's stains and patches and footprints. Much like my Dad's old chair, there are frays and curling threads. In the same sense though, there are always new seams and patterns and unforeseen colors.
For a moment...I forgot to remember.
For a moment...I remembered to forget.
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