(ganked from quizillla's "whats your definition" quiz)
"You were her favorite granddaughter, you always had a special connection"
Well I had to take with a certain twinge and the utmost of polite gratitude. Thank you. Really. That was a sweet thing to say. Context relevant it could almost be true.
But I mean, really? Really? Did we really have a special connection? Was that why she didn't call for years and treated me like an alien and didn't choose to leave me one personal momento when she died? Was that why, when I sent her the most perfect and ideal gifts, she always assumed they must be from someone else, someone much much different, until presented with the irrfutable evidence of the card?
Yes, we had a special connection.
But really, truth be told, there are pictures. Years and years of pictures. Me age 3, 5, 9, 12. Once, twice a year, tons of pictures of us being close, and my being her favorite.
But also, truth be told, I'm pretty sure the next generation got those pictures taken as well. By the pool, cute grandkids, new faces, same game.
And to be fair, one can only expect time to move on. But really, truly, must all sentimentality be so temporal?
I think of this sometimes. And I also think of this. I had a boyfriend. A boyfriend who was my boyfriend, give or take some details, for really quite a while. There are pictures to prove it. Tons and tons of pictures. Us camping, us drinking, us laying about by the pool. I bought him things. Perfect things. Things only someone who really knows you can buy you. He'd tell me how I was his favorite. Look at the pictures. He probably meant it.
And then, you know, now. Even, really, moments after the fact. I hear stories about the gifts or things I told him with presence notably absent from those tales. Hell, he'll even tell me a story I was in or told him, because he can't remember me there. My unique signature. Erased like sand in the wind. And yes. Time moves on. Everyone has a way to switching faces and names and recovering and moving on. But I still can't help but to wonder. Must all sentimentality be so temporal?
And this one friend of mine. This friend I spent 3 days a week with every day for a year. She wrote a song about me. It has my name in it. Only person to ever do that. A girl. Inspired by our friendship, a song. I swear, I ran into her on the street and she told me she was making music now. Really? truly? no longer plays. Huh, wow. I wonder who went to see you during those first rocky shows. It must have been great and difficult and hard, glad you had poeple to help you through it. Poeple. yes. warm fuzzies. emphasis on the fuzzy.
And so, I guess. I don't get it. I don't understand how we all become so unvisible. So irrelevant with the passage of space and time. Every face I have ever known burned into my retinas and scarred into my heart and yet some people can not even remember the last name of those who gave them second wind or laid down their lives. You were their favorite. Now you are a face in the crowd. Now you are filler.
Do we really possess the ability to become visible? Or is time moving that fast that we are truly all blurs. Anonymous accomplices to lives greater fetes. Relevant for our warm pulsating presence in the moment, wispy and unspecific as one looks back over personal progress.
Maybe this is where I get to be unique. I don't like to see myself. My images, in pictures, to me, to my naked eye. fuzzy, blurry, barely me. But the others, Oh the others, they are like greaten golden gds. Statues that mark the passage of time and the glory of each success and failure. How could I forget them. so massive and perfect and heavy. so glorious. so endowed with promise and invested with effort. I can't forget and I don't discount.
The search for progress is not floated by such constant decathecting.
And I'm not invisible. I sit right here like I sat there, giving you time and hope and energy and love. I watched you record your first album, you helped me take my first step. How? How is that less memorable than last night's american idle and the ability to make you a gin and tonic. How is my smile that much less sweet in memory?
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