I’m reminded of all the addresses I’ve had over the last seven years each time I use Google auto-fill. I type C into the first name box at checkout and a list of streets and zip codes appears next to my name.
There’s usually a good reason and a real reason for everything. I’m responsible enough to forward my mail but too lazy to purge the past from Google Chrome. That’s the real reason.
The good reason is that, of all the places I’ve lived, Memory Lane is still my favorite (sentimental Dad joke). I once heard a memory champion explain how he memorizes the order of a full deck of cards in under twenty seconds. “Picture yourself walking through your house,” he said. The trick is to anchor the first card with the image of your front porch. The second with your door handle. On and on, through the living room and kitchen until you’ve anchored 52 items on an imaginary walk-through.
Memory is important to me because mine leaks like celebrity gossip (I don’t remember where I heard that). Forgetfulness can be convenient, but it’s not a great quality for a writer, or a spouse, or a card counter, I suppose. Some writers claim to only rely on memory. They say, “the good shit sticks!” More often, however, I find myself writing about truths that feel minor in the moment. Little things that are forgotten by the time the light turns green, or the second martini arrives.
Besides my diary, I use the notes app on my phone to keep track of random things I see and hear. I walked up a steep hill in a nice neighborhood yesterday and found two kids at the top holding skateboards, contemplating. One got in position and buckled his helmet. The other kid, who must have been 12 years old, walked away, saying, “Whatever man, it’s your funeral.”
I thought, “What a perfect response.”
Later on, two old women in their 70s walked past me in the parking lot. One pointed at the other’s double-parked Cadillac. “Hey look at your car,” she said in a raspy, long island accent. “It’s sticking out further than your ass!”
I overheard an old man with a heavy voice talking to his grandson at a coffee shop. He told him, “There are two types of silence. The nice kind, when you know they’ll be back. And then the other kind. When you know they won’t.”
Sometimes I forget to attribute the notes on my phone to a particular person or location. This is a problem because I don’t know what’s fair game to use in my work. Did I make that up? Was that on the news or was it a bad dream?
After a night of drinking, I woke up to a note that read:
“Am I supposed to forget those tiny moments that made me vibrate?”
I don’t know exactly what it means. If I stole it or wrote it myself. But I like it.
The most recent note on my phone reads, “Little People, Big Hearts,” based on an idea my friend has for a dating app for little people. He tells me the app will be called, Date A Little. “When little people match,” he says, “they can send each other a ‘get-to-gnomie’ greeting card.”
I probably didn’t need to write that one down. The good shit sticks.
I was reminded of how memory can rush back a few weeks ago during an interview. The interviewer asked about a chapter in my book I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Words far enough away they could have been written by someone else. Sometimes people ask questions about my book and I’m back in middle school, trying to give an answer on the homework I never did.
But I closed my eyes and pictured that old house. The welcome mat was the first word. The door handle was the next sentence. And before I knew it, I was showing off the guest room and breakfast nook. Like I built it all myself.
A list of old addresses works as well as anything for dredging up the past. Some people use music or scent. The song they listened to on the drive home from the doctor. Or the deodorant they wore at summer camp. But close your eyes for a moment and stand on an old front porch in your mind. I bet you can still hear laughter coming from the kitchen. The tears in the hallway. A lot of good things things that don’t need to be written down. And other things you’d never tell a soul.
The good shit tends to stay right where you left it.
You’ll have to write down the rest.
The temperature is skateboarding down a hill at full speed in the summer heat! 🔥
-Corey
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This short writing is definitely Good Shit! Keep em coming!