Anatomy of a Dress

I don’t have a lot of childhood memories. And I also don’t ever have flying dreams.

I just went through a box of photographs, looking for some baby pictures that might jog my memory–or reinforce the sudden notion that all my childhood stories are inherited–when I found a sheaf of college pictures. Phil and I on the futon in the midst of a lovefest on Cranium night when David and Hoku were in town, Julia exhaling mightily into that gatorade bottle we filled with dryer sheets to try to mask the smell of pot (remember that thing?) Andy in a dress, Erica in a trucker hat with a Fu Manchu, Jacob very stoned, Julia and Becky and I in our Mardi Gras masks, drunk me at some random party with about 40 dollar bills folded neatly and tucked into my cleavage, my vigorously wrapped sprained ankle, Becky with cinderblocks duct taped to her feet, roll after roll of us unbelievably baked in Lee’s institutional dorm room–and now I’ve ruined it all by cracking myself up.

The surge of emotions I’m reexperiencing, powerful and conflicted feelings looking at old snapshots with lovers, looking uncomfortable and lonely in Ireland, awkward and stoned in Amsterdam, overjoyed and a little chubby at the Antrim coast,  the affection and familiarity of Julia looking over John’s shoulder at something, the rapture of Phil’s AHA! face–the immediacy of all these emotions instantly recalled in perfect clarity and intensity…does make me wonder about “letting go” or “getting over” the past. It may not be Claudia Rankine’s dying down in the heart at all. Maybe it’s more like a tent pitched on shifting sands. Move to another stretch, wait for the wind to change and push this bit of emotion and memory off to the left, or under that bit of brush. But it’s all still there, all still as intense as ever, all still parts of a whole–integrated, maybe, but distinguishable parts.

In other news, I just love this man.