Memory is a Spiral
What you will become, we are now. Those who forget us, forget themselves.
“What you will become, we are now.
Those who forget us, forget themselves”
- Unknown
Ten years ago, a great flood rushed upon the Northeast. The people left their homes in caravans as the Atlantic came stampeding through the streets. They huddled in motels and shelters and in the homes of relatives, waiting for the wrath of the storm to end. And when it did, they returned to find their towns in ruin.
At dawn, the people stepped into the breaking light to see for themselves the destruction. They cried and laughed and came together. And then they began to rebuild. Hurricane Sandy was a shock to the system. Some dormant quality of our nature was shaken back into being. What arose from the debris, from the swollen ground, was the fiery hearth of community. The women congregated in front yards and the men told stories in gas station lots. Neighbors lent their hands to work and children were sent to the homes with power to wash and bathe and study.
For some time the people relied on each other and this instilled in them a tenderness. They regained something they had lost along the way. The floodwater destroyed, but it had also purified - it rectified and gave new life. It awoke the towns from their slumber. When the waters receded, left in the wake was the battered and stable raft bound by community - floating on.
But as time passed and the towns recovered, this feeling dwindled and the people fell back into their old ways. The blinds were drawn closed again and the edges of the closed off windows glowed with the light of television sets. The streets were silent and empty and the gas stations lonely and transient. Greetings became meek, and then they were murmurs, and then there were no greetings at all and the sense that one lived their life separate and alone pervaded the towns. The feeling of some shared fate, the bond built from tragedy was gone. Just as the sea had rushed across the streets months ago, now the deafening silence swept across them again.
Is this our nature - to remember and forget?
To remember and forget again?
Like a circle.
If memory has a shape it’s a spiral. It’s a great procession moving through space and time. We tell stories that spiral upward from the foundation, stories that are passed up, re-crafted, reanimated and carried forth - carried forth so that we do not forget.
Seven days after the storm had passed, my Grandfather and I drove to his home in Lavallette, NJ. As we drove down 35, I saw the destruction - the shops and homes, one after another, wasted along the road.
On the beach were couches and dining chairs, lamps and picture frames, artifacts of the most intimate gathering spaces of family life scattered like tombstones half buried in the sand. On the water’s edge I watched my Grandfather and his great sadness. He was not mad. He did not curse the sea. But I swear he was holding in tears, damned if they should join the mass of ocean before him.
Seven years later I sat on the same beach. Time had passed and life had been restored. Behind me stood the resurrected homes propped on their stilts like the kin of giants. Families walked across the shore kicking the water up and bathing under the warm sky.
It was hard to exist here without being reminded of my childhood. The memories came in waves - my Grandfather’s old transistor radio broadcasting a baseball game, the smell of propane grills being fired up, teenagers loitering in the road at dusk, their laughter traveling on the warm night, the sound of the ocean through the bedroom window, my brother and I casting shadows on the walls because we could not sleep. They were all signals of safety and comfort. They all felt like photographs, picked up and placed outside of time.
I left the beach and walked down the road past the rows of altered structures. My eyes scanned for the familiar. As a boy I had always loved the neighbor’s house. It was a small, modest home like ours, but it was painted a peach color, with vibrant flamingo shutters. The flamingo house. I looked at it now. It was different. Painted a dark green. A crushing insult to the vibrant color of my youth. But I stood there seeing it for what it once was and would always be to me.
There will be a child who grows up among the backdrop of dark green. Who comes to rely on it - who comes to know themself among its image. And one day, if they are lucky, they will see that someone has gone and painted over it, painted over the image of their likeness. And they too will feel a violent pang in their chest. A stubborn realization. That all is but a passing shade. That time is a thin veil between us.
keep diving. -AJ