Friday 30 December 2011

A fragment

I never remember the endings of things. I try to tell people the stories of my most favourite books or films, and always, where the ending should be, my mind is just blank. I can enjoy these stories over and over again, and be surprised each time by how they play out. On a good day, I think that this is wonderful, and that it is like being a child who finds things out for the first time. But usually, I feel like a crinkled old shell of a person, with a head full of fragments that don't piece together. Who am I that I can't recall a story from start to finish?
Stories of my own life are even worse, I have to rely on my family for them all. My father tells me of the time my brother and I dug for treasure by the window of an ice-cream stall at the beach, and all of the lost change that came out of the sand were our riches for the taking. My brother remembers everything, but keeps the stories to himself. If I ask him whether he remembers the scene in a photograph, he will say yes, but nothing more.

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