The Writing Machine

Stories by Christian Cloud Abraham

Installing the Database of Memory

MEMOIR PROJECT ROUGH DRAFT

1971. I turn two. The language I learn begins to tag the objects and ideas in the world around me and I begin to catalog things in my memory with the tags of language and build the structure of my ever-growing relational database of object and idea to the context of each situation. But the timestamp on each record, object, module of memory is not yet in place. I can only record time by the house I lived in at the time of the memory and who was or was not my dad at the time. 1971. My dad is still my only dad and my second birthday begins my first memory - the foggy memory of standing on the kitchen table at S—‘s parent’s house in the country throwing plates at my dad and S— and her parents. My first memory does not contain an association to a tag, “Member of The Way International.” This is my only memory from before The Way and I may even be wrong about that. This may be my third birthday I am remembering, and that would mean I don’t have a memory at all from before The Way. Either way, from then on, The Way is associated as either a primary or secondary indexing key to all memories, both good and bad.

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on June 11, 2006 in
Emotion: Wonder, Type: Creative Nonfiction