Category Archives: memory

PROMPT: Historical Events

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What major historical events do you remember?

From the Iranian Hostage Crisis onward, pretty much all of them — given they were considered “major” in whatever place I was living at the time.

Out of Joint [Blank Verse Sonnet]

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My days are out of joint and shuffled up,
 and memories are pictures cast upon
  the floor, and rummaged through 'til chaos reigns, 
 and I pick random recollections out
  of all the events ever to transpire.

They seem no more my life than another's:
 a glance, a glimpse, a blank firing of mind,
 a wicked hope that truth will come to me.

But all I see are monochrome mindscapes
 that could've been wrenched out of another mind,
  or made from AI's collage artistry
 to serve some distant master's deep wish to
  learn what hot-injected time does to a soul,
  and if shuffled scene stacks can make one whole?

Bridge Out [Free Verse]

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When I was a child,
      for a time,
 the bridge was out.

They were replacing the rusty
      iron trestle bridge
 with a thick-slab concrete 
  monstrosity.

I could go down to the river,
      and I could see the 
       scarred and marred
         construction site,
  & the big yellow machines
       that sat dormant on the weekends.

But one couldn't cross the river --
      not unless one was willing to get wet, 
       and was a better swimmer than I 
        (and it was autumn & the water cold.) 

It was a strong current that swept 
       along between two steep banks. 

It was not a great distance,
       nor were they violent waters.

But that brown water moved with 
       such smooth swiftness.

I dream about the time the bridge was out,
       now & again,
        and wonder what it was
         about those weeks
          that still has meaning to my mind.

Rote Learning [Common Meter]

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Words memorized rote are a meal
wholly undigested,
That's why memorization is
utterly detested.

Rote learning is, somehow, bloating
and yet never filling.
One takes it all in by way of 
monotonous drilling,
but while you're still filling your cup
you're already spilling.
You pass your test and purge it all.
It's so unfulfilling. 

If I may, please let me suggest
that here's what you should do:
get the gist, play with it, and find
out what it means to you.

BOOK REVIEW: Bliss by Sean Lewis

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BlissBliss by Sean Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This eight-issue graphic novel blends sci-fi and mythology to tell a story of the double-edged nature of memory – bringer of both bliss and trauma. At the story’s core is a father-son relationship in which both the father, Benton, and son, Perry, must come to grips with the fact that contained within the former is the greatest possible range of virtue and vice, a nearly irreconcilable mix of good and bad.

I enjoyed that the author instilled an intriguing strangeness to the book’s world using a mix of futurism, mythology, and creativity while at the same time dealing with primal human concerns. The book asks whether being free of memories can contribute to our being worse versions of ourselves (being able to forget misdeeds,) and whether healing (forgiveness of both self and others) can happen without memory.

I found this book to be provocative and well-composed. There were points at which it felt like the scale of deviation between the good and the bad Benton were unfathomably great. In other words, it felt like the motivation for his actions strained credulity. However, that encourages one to think about how a person might behave if he knew he could be freed of the memory of ill deeds.

I loved the story, the art, the world, and the characters. I’d highly recommend the book.


View all my reviews

POEM: Wayward Memory

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I remember the feel of places past
better than I do the sights.
I remember more azure skies
than I do those dark nights.

Of colored lights and germicide
my neurons take their cues;
bringing back a hospital scene,
or long forgotten shoes.

I have a madness of memory
for faults, but not for stars.
But I can’t claim to remember
each time I crashed a car.

I know my memories are lies —
of omission and of fact.
And little can I make the claim
they’re filed neatly in stacks.

POEM: Time’s Arrow

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Precognition?

I barely have post-cognition —
which is to say, memory.

I have memories of memories of a world that never was.

Cobbled together hopes, dreams, and fears made into a montage of me.

One could chip away at what never was, but I’m not sure reality could support it’s own weight.

What was might end up a toxic rubble, steaming away into nothingness.

POEM: Olfactory Teleportation

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sitting in a Thai food joint,

couched in the atrium of a Bavarian-themed mall

in Bangalore, India

I smelt a scent —

obviously not fish sauce or coconut curry —

rather some kind of plastic, maybe in the menu lamination,

that transported me back to elementary school,

a parochial school in the Midwest in the 1970’s,

it was a plastic I’d have guessed had long ago ceased being made, 

given the lack of such spontaneous dislocation,

I squeezed my eyes shut because travel is expensive,

but olfactory teleportation is free.