My eyelashes brush up against the adjacent planks. My nose presses against splinters. I peer through the slats.
I'm lying face-down on the porch. The floor is raised two or three feet above the ground, creating a dark, enclosed chamber beneath it. Many an object has plummeted through the gaps and into the space below, due to my slippery fingers or inadequate grasp. Since the chamber is inaccessible from the outside, each object remains there forever – frozen in the orientation it fell in, like a person of Pompeii frozen in his dying stance.
I look down. From the mottled patches of light and dark, dirt and leaves below, I can make out plastic combs, grimy crayons, tiny figurines from long ago. The thickness of the layer of dust encasing each one indicates how long it has been trapped there, how long ago it was dropped.
I remember, as a child, what a horrifying phenomenon it was to drop something through the slats. If the object was important – a ring, a set of car keys, my brother's third grade science workbook – we construed hangers and strings to pickpocket the space below. Even though the chances of actually obtaining the object were as slim as the chances of winning an iPod in a claw machine, we still tried. If our hand-eye coordination was exceptionally terrible, we'd pull up the wrong object – a bubble wand instead of a wedding band, a ballpoint pen rather than a golden letter-opener. In that scenario, we'd curse good luck for using itself up on the wrong object, and continue to fish.
I glance from key-chain to fork, from gum wrapper to sticker sheet. The memories rush back. The cartooned face of Hercules stares up at me, from the mud-smeared and faded cover of an old coloring book. A small, plastic pig catches my eye, nestled between mounds of dirt and piles of grime. I smile; I still remember when my brother and I used to collect miniature farm animals from vending machines for a quarter. Greedily counting up our stock, we would then wield armies against each other and play out epic battles of horses and roosters and goats. When the best of warriors suddenly flew from the table and to their demise below, tears and mangled hangers followed.
What a world of memories. A glimpse through these slats is a glimpse into my childhood.
But it is a glimpse unique from any other. Sure, I could slide open, say, a drawer – and gaze at the objects inside, relive the memory attached with each. But those objects represented my childhood quite poorly. They were only the “really nice” objects that my parents had deemed worth keeping: perfectly-formed shells, birthday cards, nice jewelry. The drawers didn't hold the twenty-five cent figurines or grimy crayons that were part of my everyday childhood life. Only the space under the floor held that.
The chamber under the porch is an accurate cross-section of my childhood. The objects and memories there aren't picked or filtered; they're just the unglorified past.
And that's exactly what a memory should be.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
"Sleep Talk"
“Betition maure ring aug gurr taimon.”
My brother talks in his sleep.
I never know what he's saying, though. I can never glean any meaning from his slurred consonants.
“Raung etra.”
His words are in some ethereal language that falls incoherent on the ears of waking souls.
“Meang aurg nurron egula.”
Maybe it's not his fault, though. Maybe it's mine. I need a little more imagination. I need to be able to connect the dots. I need to be able to infer the Mona Lisa from sparse segments of line, need to be able to sculpt Shakespeare out of garbled and disjointed phonemes. It's my responsibility to give the sleep-talk its meaning.
After all, our brains aren't fed a coherent reality. They're bombarded with a bunch of meaningless action potentials they have to interpret. The action potentials themselves – in their raw and uninterpreted state – are meaningless.
My brother's sleep-talk is like a bunch of raw action potentials, waiting to be interpreted by a brain.
But how can my brain interpret such at three or four am? By then my alertness is detrimentally impaired by the fuzzy haze of sleep. I can't possibly dole out meaning to “raung etra” when I can barely even remember where I am!
Enter: the tape recorder.
On the night of April 28th, I lay in bed, tape-recorder in hand. My finger poised at the record button, I was ready to pounce at his first garbled utterance.
Silence pervaded the spring night. It was hard to believe that such a serene, innocuous silence could ever be punctured by sound – but I knew it would happen sometime. The wait seemed so much longer than usual when my finger was frozen at the red button...
“Berrang mau...”
My heart jumped; I roughly punched at the record button with a plunge of fear.
The syllables echoed towards me. As always, their meaning was hopelessly diffused in the ever-collapsing reverberations of the hall.
But maybe – just maybe – I could give them some profundity in daytime.
* * *
The morning commenced. I spotted the recorder twirled and tangled in the folds of my bedsheet. I eagerly snatched it up; I pressed the rewind button.
Brrzzzhhhh... zzhhh... zhhh... - pop!
It was ready to be heard.
...Whatever it was.
I pushed play. The faint static of recorded silence faded in. Then came the articulated syllables of my brother, fluidly spilling out like a soliloquy in a native tongue.
But to me, it was a soliloquy of nonsense. As always.
I dejectedly turned off the recorder and set it aside. There was no hope; I just didn't have the ability to interpret the sleep-talk. I tried hopelessly to console myself – maybe nobody could interpret his words. Maybe waking souls simply didn't have the faculties to interpret sleep-talk. Maybe his soliloquy bubbled straight from the realm of dreams. Who was I, to think that I could understand it?
It obviously wasn't meant to be heard by the ears of the wakeful. And so I gave up.
* * *
A week or so later, after immersing myself in my own business and turning a deaf ear to the garbled sleep prattle of my brother, I came across a passage in my psychology book that re-ignited my interest. I tried to brusquely push the thought aside, but I of course failed.
My fascination with his case of somniloquy could not be repressed. A million questions sprang to mind. Did his sleep-talk occur during REM or NREM sleep? Was it related to a psychological disorder such as REM sleep behavior disorder, or did it stand alone? And, most of all... what did his sleep-talk mean?
Finally – my concentration broken, my curiosity whet – I left my books splayed on the desk and sought the tape recorder.
Play. ... “Mau niv urr treetah deece...”
Still garbled – as always. Frustrated, I stopped the tape recorder, rewound it, and played it again.
“Niv urr treetah deece ifarr muh...”
Rewind. Play.
“Niv urr treetah deece...”
Rewind, play.
“Niv urr treetah...”
Niv urr. I stopped, my hands frozen on the play button. The chunks of speech he was spewing resembled English words – but with the stresses all mixed up, the pauses all misplaced. If the listener used his or her faculties to correct for such errors... the meaning was evident.
Niv urr. It was a distorted rendition of never. Rewind, play.
“Niv urr treetah...” Never try to...
Rewind, play. “Deece ifarr muh...” Decipher my... Oh, no, no.
Never try to decipher my words. That's what he was saying.
The tape-recorder slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor; the recording sharply stopped at the impact.
* * *
An hour later, I re-entered the room, disgusted with myself for running away so cowardly, for heeding the warning of my brother. I picked the recorder off the floor and rewound the tape again, determined to finish the translation. I would not be dismayed by piddling superstitions or unsubstantiated fears this time.
Rewind. Play.
“Urrtree tahdeecif arr muh...”
Incoherent syllables met my ears yet again. The sleep-talk was utter nonsense. Meaningless babble.
My brother wasn't spewing cryptic admonishes, and he never had been. It had just been my imagination. I had given meaning to something that had none. The sleep-talk was total bunk.
... But that's all of life, isn't it? Reality is but a meaningless collection of shapes and shadows, only assuming identity when we give it such.
My brother talks in his sleep.
I never know what he's saying, though. I can never glean any meaning from his slurred consonants.
“Raung etra.”
His words are in some ethereal language that falls incoherent on the ears of waking souls.
“Meang aurg nurron egula.”
Maybe it's not his fault, though. Maybe it's mine. I need a little more imagination. I need to be able to connect the dots. I need to be able to infer the Mona Lisa from sparse segments of line, need to be able to sculpt Shakespeare out of garbled and disjointed phonemes. It's my responsibility to give the sleep-talk its meaning.
After all, our brains aren't fed a coherent reality. They're bombarded with a bunch of meaningless action potentials they have to interpret. The action potentials themselves – in their raw and uninterpreted state – are meaningless.
My brother's sleep-talk is like a bunch of raw action potentials, waiting to be interpreted by a brain.
But how can my brain interpret such at three or four am? By then my alertness is detrimentally impaired by the fuzzy haze of sleep. I can't possibly dole out meaning to “raung etra” when I can barely even remember where I am!
Enter: the tape recorder.
On the night of April 28th, I lay in bed, tape-recorder in hand. My finger poised at the record button, I was ready to pounce at his first garbled utterance.
Silence pervaded the spring night. It was hard to believe that such a serene, innocuous silence could ever be punctured by sound – but I knew it would happen sometime. The wait seemed so much longer than usual when my finger was frozen at the red button...
“Berrang mau...”
My heart jumped; I roughly punched at the record button with a plunge of fear.
The syllables echoed towards me. As always, their meaning was hopelessly diffused in the ever-collapsing reverberations of the hall.
But maybe – just maybe – I could give them some profundity in daytime.
* * *
The morning commenced. I spotted the recorder twirled and tangled in the folds of my bedsheet. I eagerly snatched it up; I pressed the rewind button.
Brrzzzhhhh... zzhhh... zhhh... - pop!
It was ready to be heard.
...Whatever it was.
I pushed play. The faint static of recorded silence faded in. Then came the articulated syllables of my brother, fluidly spilling out like a soliloquy in a native tongue.
But to me, it was a soliloquy of nonsense. As always.
I dejectedly turned off the recorder and set it aside. There was no hope; I just didn't have the ability to interpret the sleep-talk. I tried hopelessly to console myself – maybe nobody could interpret his words. Maybe waking souls simply didn't have the faculties to interpret sleep-talk. Maybe his soliloquy bubbled straight from the realm of dreams. Who was I, to think that I could understand it?
It obviously wasn't meant to be heard by the ears of the wakeful. And so I gave up.
* * *
A week or so later, after immersing myself in my own business and turning a deaf ear to the garbled sleep prattle of my brother, I came across a passage in my psychology book that re-ignited my interest. I tried to brusquely push the thought aside, but I of course failed.
My fascination with his case of somniloquy could not be repressed. A million questions sprang to mind. Did his sleep-talk occur during REM or NREM sleep? Was it related to a psychological disorder such as REM sleep behavior disorder, or did it stand alone? And, most of all... what did his sleep-talk mean?
Finally – my concentration broken, my curiosity whet – I left my books splayed on the desk and sought the tape recorder.
Play. ... “Mau niv urr treetah deece...”
Still garbled – as always. Frustrated, I stopped the tape recorder, rewound it, and played it again.
“Niv urr treetah deece ifarr muh...”
Rewind. Play.
“Niv urr treetah deece...”
Rewind, play.
“Niv urr treetah...”
Niv urr. I stopped, my hands frozen on the play button. The chunks of speech he was spewing resembled English words – but with the stresses all mixed up, the pauses all misplaced. If the listener used his or her faculties to correct for such errors... the meaning was evident.
Niv urr. It was a distorted rendition of never. Rewind, play.
“Niv urr treetah...” Never try to...
Rewind, play. “Deece ifarr muh...” Decipher my... Oh, no, no.
Never try to decipher my words. That's what he was saying.
The tape-recorder slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor; the recording sharply stopped at the impact.
* * *
An hour later, I re-entered the room, disgusted with myself for running away so cowardly, for heeding the warning of my brother. I picked the recorder off the floor and rewound the tape again, determined to finish the translation. I would not be dismayed by piddling superstitions or unsubstantiated fears this time.
Rewind. Play.
“Urrtree tahdeecif arr muh...”
Incoherent syllables met my ears yet again. The sleep-talk was utter nonsense. Meaningless babble.
My brother wasn't spewing cryptic admonishes, and he never had been. It had just been my imagination. I had given meaning to something that had none. The sleep-talk was total bunk.
... But that's all of life, isn't it? Reality is but a meaningless collection of shapes and shadows, only assuming identity when we give it such.
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