The little things.

It is the strangest details we can recall from those grand moments of our life. I am looking back in a few assignments in class and thinking about what I remember and what paints that scene so vividly in my mind. I can recall the days and times of some events, but its things I rarely give passing thought to today that recall from yesterday. I can remember the big things of course, like my first kiss was with a young lady named Michelle. I do not remember her last name, or her fathers name. I do however recall the smashed smooth blackened chewing gum that polka dotted the side walk leading up to the movie theater. I remember my sweaty palms, over combed still wet hair, and the smell of the lobby in the out dated movie palace. It was twenty three years ago, but I can still picture the soap in the rest room, though I can not remember how many stalls were in there.

So I started looking at the details I see around me now. I was hoping this awareness would help me with my writing. I know the career focus has shifted in college from writing to teaching biology, but that does not mean I have to stop writing. I enjoy it. Its fun. I like to use it as a vent, and hopefully I will perfect this, regardless of my career path. So before I go off on a separate tangent, I wanted to come back to those wonderful details. How many of them do we ignore in our daily life. Have you smelled you coffee lately? Can you describe how your eggs felt, not tasted, but the texture. How many little details do we miss day in and day out that we will recall when dementia sets in?

In those details I found a great many things. That curve of the butt, when it meets the thighs. Oh by the way that is fed by my love of the sweater dress and the underlying tights I described in a previous blog, but that detail is a fresh prospective that supports my already strange fascination with the sweater dress. The ninth street park offered some strange sensations that were sensual in a non sexual way, unless you are a dendrapheliac? Not even sure how to spell that, but I know how those worn wooden rails felt. These rails polished smooth by centuries of touch. I wondered who might have held their hands on those same rails generations before I thought to attend this school?

I tried to find other sensations where I thought they might hide, like in the Tivoli. That used to be a brewery, and now it is the campus student lounge. Fitting in an homage to Animal House, but alas no beer made in those hollowed halls any more. Yet I found myself wanting to smell the now absent hops that once mashed in those walls. Yet I did not detect even the faintest hint of that ghost. What I did find was a strange orchestra of scents that assaulted my senses. Flowers, fruits, fast food, clothes soap, and body odor. So many scents, and so many dancing around. Rich vibrate colors, mixed with the worn and faded structure. So much to process, and I could do was wonder what I would remember in the decades to come?

Now in this mission to find these details, to enhance my writing, I made another discovery. Maybe I just reenforced something I already knew? It is the little things that hold the greatest value, and it will be hard for us to remember what had an impact on us in the twilight of our life. It might be the touch of a banister, the look of a certain person, the taste of stale air moved around with youthful exuberance, or feeling you get when the air rushes past you when you open a door. What is it that will jog our memory, and what moment will we hold onto?

I am going to try not to limit myself so as to appease my future self. I will not deny any sensation my attention because I do not know what value it will have when its time comes. Each breath, each glance, each moment of contact may hold a secret in a conversation years from now. So I will try to savor each moment, and let the world tell me what it wants, and later I will reflect on what I desire with fondness and expectation.