Did you notice how your memory woke up this year?
Even neighborhood neon, brief interactions and familiar sight-sores careen through your mind. They fling drabs of color to anchor themselves as memories.
In the 18th century, careening was for pirates. You let your sailing vessel run aground at low tide to make repairs below its water line. You rope a tree to pull the mast over to expose more hull.
While you careen, you’re helpless. To fight a ship requires mobility. With the tide low and your vessel beached, you won’t survive if discovered. Urgency infuses careening’s chantey. Yet when the tide returns, you’re afloat once more.
We careen our memories like pirate ships. Everything you can’t recall is beneath your water line. You have no capacity except for a few particulars. Experiences become barnacles to be scraped away in the urgency of the present.
Don’t believe me? What color of car was in front of you this morning? What’s the name on the QuikTrip clerk’s name tag?
And how many shipwrecked memories remain to you at end of day?
