Thoughts on Making Memories. Aug '09

"You always answer with your whole life to the most important questions. It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what words you use, or with what arguments you tried to defend yourself. At the end, at the very end, you answer all the questions with the facts of your life. The questions that life has asked you over and over again. These are the questions: Who are you? What did you really love? What did you really know? To what and to whom were you loyal or disloyal? With whom or with what were you brave or a coward? Those are the questions. And you answer the best you can, telling the truth or lying: but that's not important. What is important is that finally you answer with your whole life."

"Uno siempre responde con su vida entera a las preguntas mas importantes. No importa lo que diga, no importa con que palabras y con que argumentos trate de defenderse. Al final, al final de todo, uno responde a todas las preguntas con los hechos de su vida: a las preguntas que el mundo le ha hecho una y otra vez. Las preguntas son estas: Quien eres? Que has querido de verdad? Que has sabido de verdad? A que has sido fiel o infiel? Con que y con quien te has comportado con valentia o con cobardia? Estas con las preguntas. Uno responde como puede, diciendo la verdad o mintiendo: eso no importa. Lo que si importa es que uno al final responde con su vida entera."

— Sándor Márai

Tarifa. El Mar. If a river symbolizes the passing of time, then the sea should be that and also his rhythmic beating. The impatient thumping of time, asking for attention, hindered when arriving at the coast. This is where the great water breaks and that what seems to be the same endless water is like standing still inside movement. The way at night, when alone on the beach, the constant wind is like being inside silence. The never-ending arriving of water, trying to go further, then being pulled back by it’s own force, only this way continuing to exist.

A strange condition reigns in Tarifa. I encounter lives motioning between a past without words, and a future without direction. Young people who echo within themselves, returning to the same point over and over. And this movement is like a standstill. Stuck in the centre of the raging time, of the unpredictable wind, and the pounding, pounding at the edge of the earth, water and air.

Maybe the condition isn't that strange but the concentration is. People attempting to forget, shattered dreams became hazy tones. Became the absence of answers. Is it that the mind is being comforted here, cradled by this harbor?

A Frenchman told me that he had come to Tarifa to let the water run under bridges. I gave him a puzzled look and he explained that ‘laisser couler l'eau sous les ponts’, is like saying.. letting time pass. Deja que pase el tiempo, the Spanish say.. Time heals, isn’t it what we are advised after hardships, ‘let time go by’. I prefer the expression: ‘turning the page’.

The events of our lives are like small histories. They are like pages in the book that is our life’s story. If we take our losses, whether they are places, people, or dreams and we have to leave them behind, we enter a time of parting, of mourning. The occurrences and emotions are being processed till they become memory, and hopefully insights and understanding. These events and times lived become part of our memories. Later, we should be able to find these memories. As if they were tangible, sculptured within us. Build like narrations with words, because we shared them, molded them over in our mind. Because this is the way we seize them, show them to others and to ourselves. We often speak of our memories and we often use the same phrases because they are the stones of our tales. Certain paragraphs are essential to understanding ourselves and explaining our pasts.

It seems to be a highly personal, and complicated process that is only partly a conscious one. I see the action of facing certain past moments. I notice the possibility of choosing the meaning of an experience. An experience isn’t in itself bad or good; it doesn’t have a fixed meaning. We are the ones that choose to see them in a certain way. I think of the Italian man who tried to explain to me that you have to place your good memories on top of your backpack of lived life. The bad ones you hide on the bottom, so it takes a while to get there. The good one are always just under the surface. Easy to recall. He controls part of the process of remembering. Surely we notice the progress from time to time, in ourselves, and we should observe the process. It is very important after all, this inner dialog, when we listen to our days become memories, become insights and stories. Stories that we could share or choose to access in ourselves.

I notice the struggles people are having with their personal history, parts of lives that have gone by and have become silence. Sometimes it seems that people have distanced themselves from certain chapters. As if they don’t accept the authorship of certain times. They let time go by, but the memory is no more than nightly visits and mumbling sounds.

We have memories that are incoherent phrases, unfinished sentences. Going back to certain times, certain losses is painful, and sharing them, like thinking of them, is a way of reliving them. We avoid certain pages of our book; we turn over some pages quickly, without fixing our gaze. Even though they are important and they made us who we are this day. They are there. And then, I wonder, there must be some pages that we never turned. They are blank pages, unwritten. Waiting for words, waiting to be included in this book. Waiting to become tangible memories, without these pages our history is unreadable. We are not whole.

Even if we never speak about these specific passages, we should write them down inside. Of course, time does a lot. Time polishes the sharp edges of memories like water when passing stone. But we should do the work, not just waiting for time to have passed. The work is being done while, after the initial pain or pleasure, or any emotion, we go about our days, while we laugh, run, sleep. And we write. Time is wordless flowing water. Writing is sitting at the riverbank or shore and listening, and feeling time. Filling the pages. We construct ourselves through our history. We make our losses tangible.

So some people I meet in Tarifa carry with them several unwritten pages. Or pages that are wiped out every night with cans of beer. Does it have something to do with this town? The sea is comforting, it has a calming effect. It’s a force of nature, overwhelming. It is concentrating on a repetitive movement, which helps us process, if we open up to her. But maybe it can also lull us and support our stand still. Like being inside the sound of the wind, inside the repetitive movement.

The condition of not writing history includes a great deal of silencing. The memories that have not become words, the memories that get stuck in a breath, the loss that is no memory yet. A memory has a shape, form and lines. It is carried by words to the outside, to fresh air, to others. Losses that are shapeless and shifting without words weaken the body, the heart. Need constant suffocating because their cries are seen in hazy eyes. It spreads through the veins, taints other memories, evades the present day and sighs at night, drowning in silencing substances.

What do you do so that loss doesn't become silence? A silence that floods pages and overshadows the book. How does one make sure the page has been written, how to know it has sank into the whole and is bound with the rest? How do you know you’ve turned it?

What does it mean when someone cannot speak about certain events?

I ask myself a lot of questions, and some I can’t answer. I ask others many questions. It makes some uncomfortable, they tell me, sometimes. Other people tell me things about their lives, and I consider it one of the most beautiful things. I enjoy nightlong navigating the shapes of memory. Seeing people tracing back their steps. Hearing their convictions, the intensity of the intersection of time, heart and place. Often seeing their joys, their disappointments, what they learned, what they lost and how they carry all of it.

I go about it my way, the way I think is right, at least for me. I am trying to accept. To accept all of it, all that I damaged and that damaged me. All I took without asking and all that was taken. And recall, when alone, all the times I tried and that I received without asking. That I learned and let go. That I grew and became stronger. That I smiled at my feet. All of it. And then I give it to the sea, and let her take some of it. I see that other continent.

Here in Tarifa, the wind beats shutters, beats natural drums, and pounds the words against the sides of my skull. When I lean back against the unpredictable wind, blinded by my own hair, I often smile.

Yes, I smile often these days. Surrounded by different continents, new accents, limits of the self, tempted to row to the other side. But I trust my feet, I enjoy were they take me, withered and worn shoes. These days I watch the ocean from a bar, I watch my feet in the water and I try to be honest about all of it. The pain of losing, without sinking aimlessly. Nourishment and nutrition. What I need to do and remember, maybe on a daily basis, to stand firmly and keep my smile sincere.

The sea takes from me, it takes some of my long lasting questions, some of my newer senseless longings. It gives, to us who are her children, a comfort and a confidence in greater rhythms. It overwhelms the buzzing broken sentences and smoothes ripples out till there is only her confusing silent-like respiration. I am reminded that my most intense memories come from all the times that I stood still and watched and smiled, that I allowed a moment to be a moment fully. The simplicity of words and air, of lines that are rock, age, refrain. Then, the seduction of the night, the teasing of temporary sensations, disposable stares, aching body.

I embrace all of it; I exercise in embracing all of me.

Where two seas meet, where two winds fight, where two continent long.

I am smiling. I am writing. I am healing.