Prototype 1:
Ever since I grew up, I’ve been chopping off the branches that I
don’t want to remember, the memories of me that I deem less worthy,
or simply second rate.
I discard them like a snake does her skin,
leaving them on the forest floor, empty and brittle,
only former shadows of myself that I won’t ever be needing again.
It’s as if I’m a cicada, singing in my skin by night,
but once the dawn breaks I leave it behind
to move to better things.
I’ve developed selective memory,
only remembering the things I want to,
shaping my identity on what I choose rather than on what I am.
Prototype 2:
Once I was lucky enough to stumble upon a free concert in London.
It was outdoors, and the air had that magnetic feeling in it where
you feel drawn to everything around you,
including the bearded man blowing giant bubbles next to the Thames, the logo of the London Underground, and the waiter at the Greek restaurant with a wedding band on his left hand.
The air is loaded with scents of foods and every one of them smells like
the best thing you’ve never tasted.
Even the sunset has a smell as it slowly waves goodbye to the Globe theater
and Big Ben. It wraps me in its golden kisses that smother me in their warmth
making my eyes light up and streaks of gold appear in my
hair. I feel like one of those Barbies you stick underwater to make its hair change color.
That is what London was doing to me on that evening: changing my colors.
And I knew there was no way that everyone else
wasn’t feeling this, too.
Jessie J was on stage, her head shaved, the remaining stubble
bleached blonde and glowing like a halo, and the tower of the Tate Museum
of Modern Art loomed behind her. I wondered if the painting and the sculptures in inside were listening, too, as Jessie J revealed a side of her that I didn’t think was there.
She clutched the microphone and I could see tears welling up in her eyes as she sang
“Don’t lose who you are in the blur of the stars. Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing, it’s ok not to be ok.”And I can’t help but cry with her because suddenly I feel what she feels,
and a rush of memories and emotions come rushing up to the surface and I turn to Audrey, the only other American I’m aware of in the audience, and through the waves of smoke and marijuana wafting on the breeze, I swear to her I will never forget this moment.
The rest of the audience must have felt the same way because they all took their smart phones
out, recording Jessie baring her soul, and suddenly I realized I was watching my life on twenty
different screens. I was surrounded by youths suffering from a sort of paranoia where they
can’t trust their own cerebellums and cerebrums—they are constantly backing it up. This fear chains them so that they can never fully live anything because they are too afraid of forgetting it. And in this moment I realize two things about the human race, the generation in which I stand: We are forget-o-phobes, and worse, we are perfectionists.
We live in a world that dances to the mantra “Make it new!” and time shakes the chain, demanding more as the world goes through costume change after costume change.“Make it new! Make it new!”
We sense the age of it, like a strawberry that is barely too sweet, the moment the new bursts onto the scene, and, like an apple to oxygen, it fades to brown and our attention fades away.
But we don’t want to forget them, these moments. It frightens us to see them fly away so quickly, so we capture them, so later, when time slows down, we can hold the ghosts of these moments close and try to understand their mystery. We force them to relive what they are a thousand times so we can pretend they never left.
Because in a world where new is old and old is new, living something once is no longer enough.
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