Impressions and Clarity

. . .

People like to remember significant events.
Their first kiss. Their first drive. Their first
drink. But what about the moments you
can’t explain? The moments of realization,
of clarity. Those are the moments I remember.
Those are the moments that stuck with me.

I woke up from my dream in a daze. My face
was wet but it wasn’t until the first tear hit
my hand that I realized I was crying. I jumped
out of my bed. I wanted, no, I needed to find
my mom. I had to see her face. She caught
me in her arms, my tears blurring the face
I so desperately wanted to take in. She held
me just like I knew she would. My fears of
losing her dimmed, now that I could see her
and touch her. One day she will leave me.
One day I will not have the option of even
calling her. One day I would have to say
goodbye. I hugged her tighter. She never
asked me what was wrong. Wrong. It was all wrong.

I heard it.

The familiar sound of a tricycle on the pavement
told me my brother was near. Something
inside me jumped. I turned, not knowing
what I would see but anticipating what I
would feel. I didn’t see my brother fall. I
didn’t hear his scream of anguish. But I felt it.
As he soared through the air, for a second
I thought he looked like a baby bird, trying to
take flight. We all have to fall so that we can get
back up. As the ambulance took him away, I did
not watch it fade into the distance. My eyes stayed
on the bike left behind. It was broken in half.

And so was I.

I needed to be with my friend. I wanted to go to her
house and play. But my mother could only talk
about my guinea pig’s cage. I wasn’t sure why I
refused to clean the cage. One of us had to do it.
It became a game then. A game of power that I did not
understand. She wanted to spank me. I wasn’t scared
of the pain. I wasn’t scared at all. This woman in front
of me loved me. And if she loved me, there was no way
that she could hurt me. I saw the plastic spatula come
towards me. I didn’t even shut my eyes. Instead I
laughed. And soon she was laughing with me. And
then she told me I was grounded. That was when the
laughter stopped.

Stop.

Stop it all. I sat alone in the room. Darkness
was my only friend. Though I could not see them
I sensed the stacks of blank paper and the mounds
of comic pens. They were all staring at me, mocking
me. I had stopped feeling a long time ago. My only
was to prolong the numbness. But as the daylight
came upon me, my numbness began to fade. My
hand started to shake in anticipation but I had
nothing to give. My hand disconnected itself from
my body. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to mean
something. Instead imperfection became an endless
road in front of me. But if I did not step on to the
road, I was weak. And while imperfection was
despicable, weakness was unforgivable. I lifted my
foot and took that first step. It wasn’t much but it
went forward.
Forward.

I suppose that is how life is supposed to go.
But sometimes it is nice to go backward. Sometimes
going backward helps you go forward. When I was
a kid, I dreamed eternity. I saw mortality. I felt power.
And I was consumed by darkness.

Life is made of moments.
Which ones will you remember?

. . .

I took liberty here to name my group's project. Someone in the audience... or was it Carly? called the peice a series of impressions. Impressions are things that are vaguely emotional... they are like feelings... but have a form that is blurry. The piece is a twirl of these blurry moments because each of our lingering impressions are brought togehter as one.

The project started off with a simple idea: we will all write 3 random memories in our life that had to do with realizing something. I don't remember if i came up with this or we all did. But definitely my intentions were there - I wanted to create something about internal thought. I must say the result seemed quite "oracle"-like, as Paul would say.

So the idea carried through. We all sent it to Caroline, who read our memories, picked out the ones she liked and put everyone's memories together as one monologue. I loved the writing. After reading the monologue and I drew it out on paper as an animation as Cristina films it. Carly acted it out as the animation is played in class.

Our art peice, as I see it, is about interpretation. How do you interpret your own unresolved memories? It is also about translation and what is lost and gained in translation, from mind to writing to another's mind to drawing, filming and acting. Intentionally or unintentionally, we didn't communicate to clarify what exactly each our memories meant to ourselves. The result helped me realize that every one hears a little differently.

Instead of disjointed awkwardness, the result is a collage or a unified, fluent story with a common thread, whichI don't know how to term... a feeling of thought? A feeling of introspection? There is a little something that we all can relate to. Perhaps its because we're all sharing something in common - we're human.