Memoirs

I am currently addicted to memoirs. I want to write my own in the worst way, but since I cannot come up with the motivation to do so (I claim I do not have the time, but really it is the motivation I lack), I am devouring others’ writing. I began with Angela’s Ashes and have continued with Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors--if not the most unique, certainly the most bizarre memoir I have ever read. Then, a few days ago, I finally got around to reading a chapter of a memoir one of my friends is writing, and now I have begun Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries which, ironically enough, has even been made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. From what I’ve read, I am intrigued enough to want to see it.

There is something tremendously moving the way people have of describing their pasts, the ways they have of blending their present thoughts and past experiences into coherent wholes. With this blog, I am putting my immediate past into words, so it’s not quite the same. Still, I wonder at the clarity of my memories and what details will remain later, when I go to describe events and people who impacted me during this time in my life. Will I be able to recall the gentle lilt of Fluf’s voice, a quality that I can’t describe, even now? Will the ocean be forefront in my mind, or will I more clearly remember all the little boutique-y shops lining Church street and the swarms of colorful weekend shoppers? Will I remember sleeping in my winter coat when I first arrived in January or joining sunbathers on Brighton’s pebble beaches in the unlikely month of April? Internet access in my pajamas on the narrow Holland House stairways? Boiling chickpeas in a borrowed pot with mismatched lid? Why do certain details survive, and which will make interesting stories?

My whole life is a story, and surely I can’t record the entire thing.