Obsolete Children, Part II

I have these memories from when I was kid. Sometimes they pop into my head because of a conversation; other times it's intentional—I'll see a kid playing and I'll push to remember wrestling with my dad or riding my bike in the hills of Southern Idaho. I've come to think of these pictures as surface memories. Sure, there's no question that I maintain a deep connection to them and can even remember a few of them quite vividly. But I've decided that the separation is appropriate because I've also been thinking a lot about the other kind of memories that knock around clumsily in my skull—the kind that are much more visceral; half of them can't be put into words.

I had a clear, blue plastic superhero when I was about 5. I think he was supposed to be made of ice… and I can't remember his name for the life of me. I don't even remember playing with it. What I do remember was the overwhelming feeling of possibility. I remember holding it up to a light in a dark room and being so filled with energy and so at ease and peaceful at the same time that that's what my memory is: This visceral, inexplicable emotion. And maybe that's what every emotion is when you're a kid because you simply don't have the vocabulary to understand it. Is it possible that we forget these visceral memories as we replace the indescribable with ideas we do understand?

I don't know. But I've been focusing on it a lot. On occasion, I'll catch myself in the middle of feeling that youthful way of experiencing something. Completely unconsciously I'll connect it to what had just happened. 'Okay. They climbed up to the top of the crane in the movie and yelled into the huge pit. They let it all go and it was an emotional moment. You want to experience that kind of moment too so you're relating to it. It makes sense. Now wipe your eyes, you pansy.' And that's it. I make myself feel as though I'm being ridiculous because the reality I know and that moment in the movie or song or daydream or conversation can never exist for more than a blink (if at all). I want more, but I know better. We teach ourselves to dream, but only enough to indulge the dreamer that never died. Then we teach ourselves to get back to work.

So here's what I've been doing. I'm a relatively sensual person. In most respects I'm just a stupid boy who likes to play in the mud BECAUSE it makes a mess, just like the rest. On the other hand, I don't deny the fact that I experience things much more deeply when I open myself up to the sounds, the scents, how something tasted, etc., and not just the pictures my brain can't help but hang onto. Because of that, it's usually a song, a picture or the smell of some stupid girl's lotion that floods the visceral memories. So I've been letting it. I focus on it. I picture holding that clear blue plastic figure up to the light. I force myself to stop thinking. *My meter's probably going to run out. I don't think the chicken I had for lunch was cooked all the way through. Oh yeah—and for god's sake, that summer tour isn't going to book itself.* I shut it all out. I latch onto the image and the feeling and I allow myself to be 5 again. Reality has a way of bringing me back when it needs me, so I let reality run off for just a minute.

The idea is to train myself to experience things more deeply. Less words. Less limits. Less reality. I'm not inclined in the least to lick a sheet of acid and hop the next spray-painted bus to the coast, but maybe if I can train myself to connect to that feeling I had when I was 5, I can also train myself to recognize and allow it when it happens now. And may—just maybe—getting up at 7 to get stuck in traffic just to be around people that I can't stand and then get stuck in traffic again with just enough time to feed my face with some bland fast food slop before getting 7 hours of restless sleep to do it all again…seem a little brighter.

How the hell did I get here?