From My File Cabinet - 2

Early 1980's while still struggling with coming out....

Past and present
blending, fading, forming pictures
being-here-now-present
seeing kids stirs up memories
like dust when you move old books on the shelf - annoying
like finding a delightful memento while rummaging through the attic - nostalgia


I am on an expedition
exploring like an archeologist in drawers and cardboard cartons
on shelves
and stacks of records that play more than just old songs
a feeling of manic excitement and rebelliousness and independence
but mostly just movie theatre emotions


My own past - distant and removed
on scraps of paper, old photographs and in between the groves of scratchy records
most real is not the memory of what was
but the memory of what was only experienced vicariously:
the drama of life as others lived it
in the eighth grade or at the amusement park


The lack of distinction between self and other
as if I had no self
but only eyes and ears and an ability to pretend to feel
digging up memories 
sparse and fragmented
like ancient pottery and pieces of bone


I cannot yet tell a story
my fossil memories are only bits and pieces
of feelings in the synapses of my brain:
pain and longing, love and jealousy
sympathy and self-pity, guilt and shame
excitement and rebelliousness and vague sexual stirrings


An uncomfortable feeling that I was always missing something
not really experiencing the way others did
feeling like a kid all caught up in an adventure movie
and about to wet his pants
not wanting to go to the bathroom
for fear of missing something


Seeing others and pretending to feel their feelings act their actions and be like them
past and present jumbled up
a thread between then and now like a life line
to get me back to where I left something vital, something misplaced, something lost
or something which I never had
but which I sense I need desperately...


...to step into tomorrow