memory

memory has been a theme for me throughout this past school year, and it seems to have been so for others as well. readings from stranger than fiction and creative writing, dr. green's chapel talk, many of my friends' recent obsession with memoir and their own pasts, dredging up past memories for my SIP.

most of us talk about being afraid of forgetting things. when i moved into an apartment of my own in new york city, i felt like i was beginning to forget my childhood, like the memory palace that had held by childhood was being swept clean and replaced with a new reality of bills, recipes, street-names, addresses, and the other paraphernalia of responsibility and adulthood. my uncles and aunts often speak of their worry that they're losing pieces of their past, or that their memories are becoming faulty with age. but i think we're more afraid of being forgotten than of forgetting. it may be terrifying to lose your place in time, for gaps and voids to open up on either side of the precipice of the present, but it's even more terrifying to find yourself erased from time altogether, like some twisted version of "it's a wonderful life".

i had a friend named johann in high school, a half-austrian, half-texan whose family lived in darfur at the height of the sudanese conflict. he seemed fearless. he sat through all of our junior prom wondering whether his entire family was dead, as their village had been overrun that morning by the sudanese liberation forces, and he didn't speak a word of it to any of us. my mom found him sitting on a street corner in macedonia once, with a rucksack over one shoulder and wearing orange indian pants, just sitting. he had flown from darfur to greece, caught a train up to macedonia, and then realized he didn't know our address or phone number, so he just picked a street corner and sat down, hoping that someone would find him. my mom saw him and thought, "he looks like someone my daughter would know- lost and brightly plumed," and she came home from the market with a bag of peppers and plums and johann in tow.

he kayaked up the nile by himself and got caught trying to go over a dam by the egyptian border police. he backpacked through the himalayas for fun, and smuggled bibles and guns to african rebel groups in the mountains, accessible only by donkey caravan. when we were in rome, standing on the dome of st. peter's basilica, he told me he wanted to see how far the dome he could walk. before i could even register what he'd said, he had jumped over the railing and was stepping down the dome's curve, eclipsing rome. i've almost never been so furious in my life. i screamed until he came back, back over the rail, shouting and then asking him, after i'd caught my breath, what in the hell he thought he was doing.

he said, "i just wanted to write my name on the dome. it's permanent. everyone else is too scared to climb out there and wipe it off, and i don't want to be forgotten."

i will never forget johann, but he almost died making certain i'd remember him. he showed up once at my door in new york city, asking for a place to sleep two years ago, spending the night and then disappearing before i woke in the morning. i ran into him in an airport in switzerland last year, where we were both sitting, drinking coffee to counter out jetlag. he said he had been in the airport for two days (i'm still not certain why) going between france and maryland.

fear will drive you mad if you let it.