It is April Fools day and I am too stuck to remember what it was like to be in this same predicament before. To be willing my fingers to write, buzzing with the same cheap coffee that carried me home that one time. Wondering when the next crossroad will reveal itself.
Do you ever question memory? Do you ever wonder if you’ve really been to the places you’ve been?
I recall sitting here before. I think. I remember pretending to labor on school work and instead writing some sort of something or other.
I’m in a cafe that plays beautiful music and sells empanadas that are love filled, and has art lining the corners, books against the wall. I drink the coffee and it does taste like bitter endings. And I do wonder if I possibly had pink hair the last time I was here. Do I remember feeling this pretty in pink? Or do I just recognize the pretending?
There are no pictures from this time, meaning it has faded into unreality. I can almost create it from scratch. So I wonder, again, if my memory serves me well.
I say, on the phone, to a love chosen and paused “I’m walking to a cafe I used to go to a lot while i was in College. A simpler time.” Only I am unsure if I came here a lot in College. There are no pictures, you understand. No concrete evidence that I stepped into the door. And I am equally if not more unsure if it was a simpler time. I can only assume, from the lack of pictures, that I couldn’t have been enjoying myself that much. When I am enjoying the moment, I tend to keep it forever. I tattoo it into my skin, I rub it into my ankles, I take a picture.
There are cults built around this type of stuff. The doubt of one's own experiences. The coloring of one's memory into something suitable to unestablished purposes.
In black mirror, there is a technology that allows you to access all your memories, via a chip lodged behind your ear. Or you’re able to access an image of your memories. There is a difference between an image and truth. Every image needs to be interpreted. If I had an image of me, in College, pink hair, less tattooed recollections, drinking coffee, staring at a computer screen, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was a simpler time. I’d have to interpret the truth. Maybe I’m frowning at my screen because I am frustrated, or because I just farted. One could never know.
This is the exact spirit of April Fools.
So I’ll let you in on A reality.
I am sitting in a cafe, next to a window and The Sun is baking me, but my coffee, less cream and sugar than what is preferred, is turning into a cold mess, and I am astray. Prank-ed into a stagnation and if memory serves me right, I'll take a picture.
After my own 76 years of life, I’m amazed at the many memories that are questionable. I’ll remember them one way but if I share the memory with someone else, their memory is different. Thank you