Early December now, and flocking birds reside in great clamoring masses in the trees out in the church yard. The wind is brisk but the thinning clouds allow a cast of pale yellow light over the lawns. There is a woman before me and her dress is fluttering and we stand there silently while guns blast in the distance. These birds are unphased but this is a moment of collapses in memory, great colliding and folding of the past, which, I would argue, this woman before me has either ignored or forgotten all together. Now next to a lot of cars I am waiting to bear witness and she is waiting for the Great Apotheosis of the Living Grace, the Fragile Absolute, the Bobbing for Apples, the Feast of La Divina Enchilada. After the sun sets and we have driven out along the freeway service road in the deep blue winter light by a faint scent of antifreeze, I sat in the Sandtrap Bar downstairs with Andrew setting two words a piece on a card hoping to give meaning and reflection to this momentus subtle occassion. The NFL on television, bitterness dripping from the haggard thing behind the bar complaining of a bruised hip, and I thought, this is memory? Some suppose, I suppose, and maybe I do too. Behind me, in dark light, a woman plays dusty tunes on a piano to a glutonous crowd of shuttered golfers, and now it comes headstrong, full-on: memory, out of time, and the sentiment of our words heaves roots out to sentiment of another epoch and another place. She will not know this, but I know it. This, then, is memory.
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