Psychologists, neurologists, and biologists define memory as gathering, storing, and retrieving sensory and intellectual information. Sadly, though, they’re dead wrong: true memory is a place, or rather, infinite places, or really, infinite plus one. Usually, our acts of remembrance follow the paths laid out by conventional wisdom; only a fortunate few find the ken to journey to their true memory-place (or places), and there is no map. When you least expect it, this true path will be noted by five (always five) disconnected items from your past; the trick is to know those are the ones, to weave together, for example, a square lemon lollipop, a broken baseball bat, the sound of a dog scratching at the door, the specific odor of the Kent cigarettes your long-dead father smoked, and a Pond’s Cold Cream jar.
The path to a true-memory place is marked by the connections of the disconnections.
Kim Peter Kovac (non-ghost #1206) works nationally and internationally in theater for young audiences with an emphasis on new play development and networking. He tells stories on stages as producer of new plays, and tells stories in writing with lineated poems, prose poems, creative non-fiction, flash fiction, haiku, haibun, and microfiction, with work appearing or forthcoming in print and on-line in journals from Australia, India, Ireland, Dubai (UAE), England, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, and the USA, including The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Red Paint Hill, Elsewhere, Frogpond, Mudlark, and Counterexample Poetics. @kimpeterkovac
South Broadway Ghost Society 