All The Things I Remember

And forgot. And remembered again.

I realise that most of my essays start with: “I remember…”

I remember a lot of things. I remember sounds, sights, smells. I remember natal charts of people I don’t remember meeting. I distinctively remember details, bits and pieces. Some more useful than others. I remember what people ate when they made a weird face. I remember how I felt when I looked at that face eating that specific thing. I’m great at finding things because I can rewind my memory and remember where I, or someone else, put whatever we lost. I remember lost things, lost times, lost places, lost people. I can vaguely remember my father’s laughter. I remember it better than I remember his voice saying my name. I can at times remember what it is like to hear my name called by his voice. I remember my name but I still tend to forget the meaning of my name. I need someone to remind me of the meaning of my name from time to time.

At times I question my memory. Is it really all that real or am I enhancing the story by vivid imagination? It’s probably a mix of both.

Take my father for example. I must’ve added bits and pieces to the story that is my father, for it to make some sort of sense in my timeline. I remember that the door was orange. That the hat was a fedora. I remember the unscented smell of his skin. I remember what it felt like when I accidentally inhaled from his empty beech wood pipe. I remember sleeping in the car outside the bar. I remember the cabin. I remember our home full of flowers. I remember all the many post-it notes with all the things I had to remember. I remember the feeling when he served me earl grey with milk on a rainy day. I remember that one summer where my feet were dangling out the car window and we listened to Edith Piaf on the stereo. I remember my father’s mother, my grandmother. How she talked to the birds. How she rolled her cigarettes on a machine. I remember she said: “Amanda, you and I have vase-shaped calves.” I remember the first time I saw her face and recognised my eyes in hers.

I remember running almost naked through the Norwegian woods. How we almost drowned in the river. I remember laying my body on the the warm, wet stones.

I remember a lot of things from 2011/2012. I especially remember my Greenpoint apartment. I remember the way I laid in bed, smoking my cigarettes. I remember my tall ashtray. I remember listening to Carlos Gardel and Leonard Cohen on my gramophone. I remember the poems, the zodiac wheel and the red painted hand on my wall. I remember this one particular morning where I had my coffee while writing when the sun broke through my living room and I started dancing like a wolf.

I remember mornings well. Coffee too. The two go hand in hand for me. I remember the humidity of July in New York, walking through the sleeping city at 6am to meet my friend for a warm cappuccino. I remember the sweet scent of Havana in the morning. Of ripe papaya, cuban cigars and strong, black coffee. I remember the thin coffee and the high altitude of Kilimanjaro. The cold, fresh morning air and the reverberating sound of silence emanating from the mountain. I remember dawn breaking at the Serengeti. I remember standing on the seat of our jeep as we drove next to the fleeing antelopes. I remember the first coffee I had in my old apartment in Copenhagen. How I sat on the floor, by the window while the city woke up. It was an unusual warm summer.

And then there are all the things I don’t remember. I can forget to breathe. At times I forget to eat. I forget to take out the trash. I forget my wet laundry in the washing machine. I forget time and sometimes I forget space too. It doesn’t bother me. What bothers me are the stories. All the stories that got lost in the wrinkle of time. I want to retrieve them. Fetch them out of whatever black whole they might be trapped in. I want to feel them again, so I can tell them and make them immortal.

Not for the sake of surviving, but for the sake of living and remembering.

Recently I’ve gathered pieces of myself I seemed to have forgotten along the way. I’ve asked myself why all the framed pictures of the flowers that I gathered from my travels, carefully dried and framed by hand ended up in my basement? When did I stop dancing? And when exactly did us people in the North forget the songs of our ancestors?

I went for a walk in the forest with my dog earlier this evening. The air was mild and fragrant. The sun was setting. The open plain looked like honey. I wore a long, red skirt. I picked wild flowers and slipped them inside my leather belt like daggers. The sound of summer was exactly how I remembered it. I took my sandals off and tried walking in a way that would turn my feet into ears. Hoping the soles of my feet could hear the sound of the songs that we lost and forgot. Inside of me I heard a voice say:

“The earth sings.”

Sometimes I think I have to be aware of how much information I take in. From the tumbling bumble bee in the pink flower to the way you exhale between sentences or how the moon travels on the night sky. I could easily explode into particles and become a part of it all. I would love nothing more than being an invisible web to contain all life moving through me. It is however not always so handy when you have a human body of flesh, blood and bones. The amount of information I take in (and remember) is one of the reasons why I have a hard time eating in a group. Before I even begin my plate I am already full of intel. Or why I have a hard time learning in a room full of people, because my insides are already filled to the brim with information, that for the most part, has nothing to do with the actual things I’m learning, such as traffic signs.

I’m learning to live from the inside out, rather from the outside in.

I taught myself how to read when I was 4. I was sitting alone in a chair, listening to an audio book on repeat on my walkman, while my finger carefully moved across the actual book. I moved my lips to the sound of the words. I don’t know how long I sat there for. All I know is from one moment to another, I could read. In school I couldn’t remember a lot of things that I couldn’t attach feelings to.

The more alive I am, the more I remember. The more I feel, the more I live, the more I remember.

These days I remember a lot more than I used to. There are a lot of hidden waves hitting the shore of my consciousness. I remember the last 4 months very vividly. I remember almost every single string of information like DNA. I remember what I ate, what I felt and the suspense in the room right before I made a decision I thought I’d never had the courage to make. I remember the sound of the jungle night when my friend told me I was strong like the tiny ant carrying the flower petal. I remember how it felt when I was on all fours and asking: “Am I an evil person?” I remember an all consuming knowing stripping me to the bone. I remember the sleepless nights, the ecstatic days and the quiet mornings. I remember Amsterdam in the rain, with the rainbows. I remember the small plane taking me back to the jungle once more. I remember the sound of my dog sleeping next to me. I remember my mom's body against mine and my sister’s laughter. I remember waking up alone and not feeling lonely. My home, full of flowers that I picked for myself. I might not remember all the songs, but I remember the important once. The songs of my heart. I remember how my soul speaks in poetry and that I can make myself coffee in the morning. What I seem to remember the most is myself, entirely.