Mental Media

This memoir, "Mental Media" is a recount of my realization that I was not fully living life. By that, I mean that I was not appreciating good times the way I should have been. This piece shows how and why I have changed my views on the way I experience things. I'm glad that I overcame this particular "stepping stone" early on, otherwise I probably would've accumulated a large amount of regrets.

My first memory of doing that ridiculous—yet, knowing my own personality, unavoidable—thing came in the second or third grade. It was a chilly day, back when I would take the school bus home. I still remember the worn-out grey seats, ridged walls, and misplaced windows that lined the entire vehicle. There was a kid sitting beside me who I never bothered to notice, so in my mind he or she is just a faceless, colorless blob. Apart from that, everything was more or less grey, and that’s because it was raining. Streaks of water ran down the glass that I was staring at. The windows wore a coat of fog, and just like all the other kids I drew shapes with my finger. We weren’t even halfway home yet but all the windows were now works of attempted art. I remember all of this well, and that’s because on that ride home in the second or third grade, as I was staring out at the rain with my mouth closed in a tight line, I did something that even I’m not sure the reason for. I fixed my eyes tight on the window, and in my head I thought: Remember this. And I did. Like taking a photograph, my first photograph on command, I remember that scene to this day.

            On my first day of grade eight, back when I never imagined my life going past my public school years, I found myself standing in a wide circle with my new peers. We were playing “the chicken game”, which was basically “the name game”, but instead of a ball, a yellow rubber chicken was being tossed around. The desks had all been shoved messily towards one side of the room; the side with the windows. For some odd reason I was in a fairly good mood—something rare for me on first-day-anything. Suddenly, one of my poorly-coordinated peers called my name and tossed the chicken about two meters to the right of me. It clunked against desk legs and disappeared under the tables. “I’ll get it,” I must have said, and then proceeded to bend down. There it was, on the brown-tiled floor, bright and painted with a panicked face. I began to extend my arm to reach for it. Remember this.

            There are more of these “mind photographs” that I have, and they all followed the same, general pattern. Eventually, I began to take them when I was at happy peaks. It didn’t take long for me to realize that what I was doing was trying to freeze moments in a way, as if I thought that by concentrating hard enough, the moment I was in would never pass. Of course, moments always do pass, and memories are, after all, just images that play out in the mind. It is the feelings that resurface, though never the same as the moment in which they first occurred, that matter. However, soon I also realized that many of these snapshots of happy times that I took were also tinged with a hint of sadness; a hint of loneliness.

            On a hot day in early May of my seventeenth year, I found myself at my good friend’s house, along with my best friend. It was afternoon-evening time, and we had wiped ourselves out after drinking heavily-sugared beverages and running through the neighbourhood like fools with bags of groceries. Our playlist of “Dance Songs!” was still ringing loudly in the background, but it was no longer welcomed. My friend, who had been boiling water for tea, abruptly stepped away from the stove to change the music to something more mellow, and rightfully so. I remember everyone’s shoulders sagging, as if finally relaxing and setting into the new, calmer pace of the evening. I opened the sliding door to the backyard and stepped out into warm spring air, and soon we were all outside. Sipping tea, wearing oversized sweaters and still listening to that calming music...we all had smiles plastered onto our faces. I remember my feet were dangling over the edge of the patio, the cup of Earl Grey tea sat in my palms, warm and smooth, and I was staring at the quickly darkening sky while trying to remember what it was that I had to do. There was this urge in the back of my mind, prodding at my conscience, telling me to…rem…emb…

            It never happened.

            I could describe to you an entire collection of pictures: some dark, most bright; some irreplaceably tinged with joy, and some laminated with a faint hope. I hope this lasts forever. This feels like ‘happy’ to me. This is what I wanted for so long. Now I’ve got it. I could describe all of these snapshots to you, but that evening, the one at the house with my friends, I could recount to you the entire movie that I lived through.

            Memories like that, they are the ones that came from moments were I smiled uncontrollably wide and felt tingles all up and down my skin. They were so good that I never even took a picture. I realize now that it’s because those were the moments that were the most real. I lived through them with no filter, just pure emotion and reaction, and therefore they are the ones I remember best. In my mind, they are not a single build up to a scene, but instead they feel more like a long storyline, with positive emotions spread out along them like butter. Looking back, I have a lot, like waking up as a toddler on some mornings to my cousins’ smiling faces and then spending the day with them. There was the afternoon I got what I dreamed of as an awkward pre-teen: my first kiss. Even better were the hours I sat with my best friend at Second Cup and had some of the deepest conversations…and more, of course, but not as much as I could have. And that’s because in a way I had been stopping myself.

By becoming this “mental photographer”, I had transformed into someone who sought to find great moments in life, as a result of a hidden panic that time would slip by and be worth nothing. Alas, by thinking in this way, I kept myself from living life in that raw way that we are meant to do. It has occurred to me now that amazing things definitely happen, and they are best when they build up and appear before us. If we anxiously await them, however, they become spoiled.

This is all a happy realization, though. What better thing to realize than the fact that I should enjoy life more freely? It will feel wonderful to find myself in a situation, sometime soon, where I am not holding my mental camera in jittery hands, but instead smiling bright and realizing, “Ah, this is one of those fantastic moments”. There are so many more memories to build, and it makes me happy that I am nowhere close to being done with my newfound collection of mental movies.

           

Under the Moon in May

This poem is based on a real, recent experience that is still fresh in my mind, and strongly reflects the way I see my life currently. As a teenager, weeks away from graduation, everything feels like it is moving too fast, and suddenly there are choices springing up everywhere that once made will determine the course of my future. Sometimes, when I take a step back from it all, I just see myself as a tiny speck in the universe and it is a wonder that my troubles seem so grand. Just as in this poem, I know I am not the only one going through this.

Remember, in May?
There was that one day
It was smiles as usual
And you were walking me home
It was chilly
And under the subtle glow of the moon
That hung dreamily in the sky
Your voice got quieter
And that conversation began.






Not ready, you said about life
There was the trace of a smile
But it wasn't quite right
And that's when I knew
The direction
In which this had taken flight.
"Me neither," I said
But you weren't done
You said, "Fast, too fast."
And then you abruptly asked me
If I knew
Just how big our universe was.

I didn't know, of course
"Does it even end?"
You gasped along with me
At the endless non-answers
And trotting along that frosty path
We went on, and discussed
The moon, planets and stars
Until I finally told you
That talking about space
Only made me sad.

I learned on that day
That it made you sad too
And we did that thing
That young people do
We laughed, facing forward
As the tears scratched at our eyes
And when we paused at a red light
You let out a sigh.

"It just feels so rushed,"
You suddenly said
And muttered, "Not ready."
Again, under your breath.
I knew what it was
But there were no words
To tell you how sorry I was
That not everything works.
Especially then
When I didn't fully believe
In what you were chasing
In what you aspired to be.

It flashed through my mind
The first day that we met
It flashed fast, and almost as hot
As the anger I had initially felt
Back when you rubbed me
In all the wrong ways
Back when I never saw
The possibility
Of this frosty day.
Back when we were,
Though we did not know
Free, in a way
To make careless mistakes
And be fools, backed up
By our very young age.
Then, four years later
This freedom had flowed
And all too fast
Our future had grown.

Weeks, maybe days
To make all the choices
That hovered before us
And unlike those years
When someone would show us
Now it was us, standing alone
No room for mistakes
And far too many seeds to sow.

We wanted to scream
"Don't do this to us!"
We wanted to pound
With our knuckles, held tight
To break into flight
Our steps soaring high
Where perhaps we would see
Just where it was
We were meant to be.
But it was a hushed night
Too cold for the crickets
And we hurried along
Watched by the stars.

Close now, and the talking had stopped
Each lost in our minds
And I thought to myself
In this endless world
Is someone, somewhere
Light-years away
Walking along in the dark night as well
And wondering if they
Are alone
To think to themselves
About impatient life
And I wondered if they
Had it all figured out.
If they did,
Could they show me?
Send me a sign?
Because walking with you
That one day in May
I was merely a piece on my own
And my place in the world
Was as cloudy to me
As the moon in the sky.