Committed to Memory

Once, when I was meeting a friend of mine and this friend's three year old daughter, in a city I had never been to before, I had no coffee at all in my chilly hotel room, and had to face the crowds of "free breakfast" guests in the lobby. I had traveled away from sunny Arizona, and I woke up in the early morning to grey skies, drizzle, and temperatures in the 50's. But the heat, which was central to the whole hotel and not able to be controlled in one's room, was not on, and I was amazed by how cold I was and how warm everyone else seemed. 

This was a strangely designed hotel, with all of the rooms for several floors arranged around a central courtyard, in which was a little fake river, and a pond with fish in it with a little footbridge over the pond, and a breakfast area where a few men, black and Latinx chefs, one of whom wore an actual chef's hat, made one's "free" breakfast to order. It has always been extremely onerous for me to put clothes on, venture to public spaces for coffee, and handle the morning in that way. I've taken to traveling everywhere (when I go by car) with a little red coffee pot I bought in Alamos, Sonora. I have found that, even in upscale, more expensive hotels, the in-room coffee service is usually just not reliable. 

The travel coffee pot. Next to a pink Eiffel Tower. 

In fact, it is so unpleasant for me to either have shitty in-room coffee or venture out into the public in the morning, that this particular visit, on day one, involved a weirdly unforgettable trip to Target, of all places, in the pouring rain. 

There is a sense of the mundane and even tiresomely banal having been suffused with absolute magic from this particular visit, and for a long time, I tried to talk myself out of it, but now I just accept that it was what I experienced. Each and every memory, including a forgettable, comfort food lunch in a vividly remembered cafe in an old house, outside of which were towering, huge sunflowers. A flying spoon. A park next to a river. The smell of leaves in autumn in a place that has autumn, months before Arizona even has late summer. A trip to the theater. A balcony in the warming October sun. Weirdly, a vivid memory of paying for parking using a phone app. The local higher end grocery store with colorful skulls in which were planted Haworthia limifolia. 

My friend arrived with her child after I was already well-caffeinated. Her daughter was quite shy, which is totally understandable. A weird hotel with a little river and a pond with fish, a glass elevator, a strange man. Somehow, what seemed the best thing to do for this child, was to sneak my colorful foam earplugs (another travel necessity) off my nightstand and then try to hide them behind a chair. Exactly what she was thinking, and why this seemed to be just the way to handle the weird situation in which she found herself, I will never know. 

Was there something particularly magical about these soft foam shapes? Did they seem almost edible, or as if they would be sweet? Did they seem important in some other way? And why was the impulse to try to hide them? Was there the thought that, once hidden, then, later, she would be able to sneak them out of the room? Was she just the messenger from the universe telling me to listen more, to listen closely?

I recall my friend intervening and admonishing that the magic items ought to be put back where they were. And I think my friend's kid was resentful and reluctant, but went ahead and did indeed put them back. I know that I said she could have them, but warned that they had been jammed in my ears, and so were probably germy, and so her having them was probably not the greatest idea. 

I don't recall exactly where the three of us went this particular morning, but it was probably the park by the river. I spent a lot of time alone on this visit to this strange city, in the autumn, wandering the streets, without a car and without any kind of plan. I also stood at my hotel window and watched people come and go at the liquor store on the corner. One of those urban, lottery ticket selling, half grocery store liquor stores, where some who went in were just buying milk, or bread, and some, cigarettes, and some, liquor. 

It was a brief visit, but, again for reasons I am not trying to understand or figure out, generated a series of indelible, unforgettable memories. Sometimes we pass through experiences in our lives that just have a lot more numinous weight and shape to them and that's that. 

It occurs to me that there is a great temptation to avoid experiences that will have this kind of weight, because whether one speaks it, or even intends it, one is making a serious commitment. The commitment is not to a person, or a future. It's a commitment to the past. To assent to always carrying it. To know, well, if I go ahead and do this, I'll maybe never forget it. And that means it will always be with me. There isn't much that's always with us. But what is, what we cannot remove or forget, is the kernel of our story, and there's no heavier commitment than that. People come and go, earplugs vanish and reappear, coffee pots and rainstorms in retail parking lots and curtain calls and October light—it's all ephemeral. 

But some times become us, and as long as there is us, so those times are. And I think the universe is kind enough to ask, first, "are you sure?" and sometimes, for which I am grateful, I've been brave enough to say, yes, of course.