My Lost History and My Holy Text

Christ, that was a lot.

Thinking back, my last clear memory involves me hoping I’d remember my birthday, because it was a good one, in that grown-up way where you don’t get drunk and fall down, but also because I couldn’t for the life of me remember my last birthday. I know I had one and I know I must have done something, but thinking back on that day, I literally can’t remember a single detail about it. I even checked this very blog to see if I might have posted a something, an anything that could jog my brain, but I only found this post, which basically consists of a defamatory aside about Canada and the following video:

And I don’t think that this show reflected on my actual birthday in anyway, but I could be wrong, see, because I don’t remember anything.

I may already be romanticizing last weekend, I suppose, because it logically would seem more pleasant based on what followed. The past work week hit repeatedly and relentlessly. to the point that all the individual weekdays blurred into a single, fiftysomething-hour span of me, bleary-eyed, typing away and wishing my brain had more time to think before it told my body what to do. But it’s done and I’m actually happy — again, in that funny, grown-up way — to be on the verge of another Monday. This week, at least, will be less busy and less cluttered with extravocational commitments.

But this all got me thinking, this inability to distinguish or even remember days: the work days last week, my recent birthdays, and did I just buy milk yesterday or has it already gone bad? It all goes together. And that’s for the best, I’d guess, otherwise we’d be mired in the details of every single second of every day. But at the same time, it’s funny what sticks out.

This year on my birthday, rain fell all over California — not hear in L.A., though it tried, but in most other places, including my hometown. When I spoke with my mom on the phone, she asked, “Can you remember it raining this late in the year before?” I did, specifically because it happened on my birthday: June 4, 1992. I can picture that afternoon in my head perfectly: getting picked up at school and finding a present waiting for me in the back seat. It was the Super Nintendo Legend of Zelda, which had hit shelves about a month before. I tore it open and began absorbing the contents of the instruction manual — the buttons, the art, the vaguest hints about the world waiting inside that plastic box.

And I was so wrapped up in all things Hyrule that I didn’t realize that it had begun pouring outside the car. Like, hard drops, and falling on baked-dry asphalt, so there was that smell, you know? In rained again on the drive to dinner. And while I don’t remember anything else about that birthday, my tenth, these parts wet and bright stand out even today.

If I’m going to forget whole strings of days, I’m at least happy I have still have some of the important ones. I’m writing it out so I don’t lose it.