From Dean Young’s poem “Flamenco,” a poem I had dog-eared, I underlined and asterisked the line, “a collection of eternal accidents.” It’s an interesting way to think of life, a series of accidents, most of which are forgotten but no less consequential. Eternal – what followed the accident was, necessarily, the rest of life. I assume these are small accidents and not really accidents. Maybe coincidence or minor events in a life primarily made up of minor events.
From that line, I tried to write. I imagined a man standing at a fountain turning a wish coin in his hand. Instead of thinking about what wish he might make, he’s thinking about the long list of things he’s forgotten, about how much of his day, days, and life have passed by completely unnoticed. What was the color of the sky last Wednesday? When’s the last time he heard a bird sing and what type of bird was it? He doesn’t remember these things because he wasn’t paying attention enough to commit them to memory. But even with the things he did remember – how many of those have been forgotten? How many details slip through the sewer grate and are forever washed away. How many memories have receded or faded – have become fragments of memories just beyond our reach?
He almost liked the absurdity of it – trying to remember the last thing he’s forgotten or whatever might have come before the last thing he’s remembered. In that moment, in front of the fountain, he begins to tell his story backwards. Before the fountain, coffee at a sidewalk cafe. Before the cafe, a slow walk in the morning mist on uneven cobblestone streets. Before that, breakfast at a corner table with a window to his right and an exposed brick wall behind him. Before that, a shower and brushing his teeth and shaving and looking at his face in the mirror. Before that, stretching his arms as he sat on the edge of the bed. Before that, waking and swinging his feet onto to the carpeted floor of the hotel bedroom. Before that, sleep and dreams – that’s where the forgetting began – his dreams. That’s where the forgetting always begins.
Of course, even this list was incomplete. What about the taxi that hurried by or the man in the overcoat with collar turned up? What about the three pigeons in a puddle flying away as the taxi drove by? What about asking for pepper from the waitress who had black shoulder length hair and small hoop earrings. What about the child-sized hand print low on the glass of the display case full of pastries and baked goods? What about the names, Julia and Thomas, etched into the weathered wood of the table? What about the way the morning light was a single, silver line in the gap between the heavy brown curtains? These things came back to him too, but he knew there was so much more. He grew tired of trying to remember it all. He puts the coin back in his pocket thinking he’ll return another day.
I filed the “poem” away in my drafts folder where I’ll forget about it. Of course, in some respects, I’m the man with the coin. But instead of a fountain, I’m on my sofa with my computer. Instead of a cafe on fabled old European streets, I’m drinking tepid coffee (Folgers) out of my blue mug and listening to the trash trucks rumble down Chestnut Street. Only the thought experiment was real.
How many things have I forgotten and why does my brain hold on to the things it “remembers?” Which eternal accidents will have “meaning” and which ones won’t? Or perhaps more accurately, where will I assign (have I assigned) meaning by the sheer act of remembering? I remembered waking up because the phone buzzed early in the morning – but I won’t remember this detail tomorrow. I remember setting the syrup bottle upside down so I might get one more drop out of it the next time I go to use it. I remember hearing the rubbery sounding squeaking of the parakeets outside and the morning light of a blue sky sunny day. Very few, if any of these things will be with me tomorrow, or even later today as I interview for a job or go for a walk or cook dinner or go to bed. So much forgetting – so much richness in the present moment… in this collection of eternal accidents leading who knows where.