Day 908, December 7, 2022

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On Memories

Haruki Murakami. in Novelist as a Vocation, recommends that you guard the drawers of your memories against unnecessary incursion so that they are preserved for fiction. I fear in these pages (?) I have been emptying the contents of my drawers all around the room like a high school teen. I wonder if it is possible to pick up a t-shirt, a pair of underwear, refold and tuck them back into the drawer for later use. That is the plan anyway. 

I have always been liberally free with my memories, whether in fiction, essays, or poems. To a point. There is always a point beyond which it would be too unbearable to admit, or too damning, too embarrassing, so my rational conscious self holds back, becomes coy or shy. It is an enforced self censorship. Always veiled, never a true whole self. The closeted existence.

I’ve always considered that lack of transparency to be a flaw and ultimately damaging. But perhaps I am just saving those bits for fiction and my drawers are not entirely yanked out and strewn on the floor for all to see. 

So, I hope one day soon you will read the stories I dare not tell.



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