One More Ghost Of A Staircase

 

Speaking Of Knives

A few days ago I suddenly felt an itch in my left forefinger.  I absently scratched it, then realized there was a small cut, looking as if it had been made by a knife or razor.

I had no idea of how it came to be, though.  Actually, this sort of thing happens to me fairly often;  I may be a physical coward who tries to avoid taking risks unnecessarily, but it so happens I'm also a klutz, and I'm always bumping into things and knocking things over, so casual minor damage is not unexpected.

Here is a photo of a somewhat more serious-looking cut in the very same place(weird!), from a few years ago;  it looks rather gruesome, and you would be forgiven for thinking I would remember an incident like that -- but no, I have no memory at all of that cut, either.

Kind of odd, in light of the fact that I still well remember the incident from my fifth or sixth year, when someone spilled hot porridge over my foot, tried to wipe it off, and peeled the scalded -- cooked! -- skin right off my foot!  I ended up being carried to the nearby emergency room for treatment. 

EDIT:  While re-reading this post much later I remembered that this incident was actually the third time I was injured in the same spot (in fact, you can see the aftermath of the first cut in the top photo;  I don't know why I didn't recall the incident before).  Years ago, during a period when my mother was weak from illness and couldn't get about much on her own I got her a wheelchair.  On one occasion, having helped mom into the passenger seat of the car I was loading the folded-up wheelchair in the back, and somehow I managed to get the same finger caught on something and tore open a triangular flap of skin.  It didn't come off completely, but instead had opened up like a hinge or a page in a tiny book.

I gingely put the flap of skin back like a boxtop, wrapped it up in some tissue and drove mom home.  Surprisingly, there was little pain.  It healed with little to show for it, except the edge of the cut is now slightly thicker than the surrounding tissue.  Is third time really the charm?  In any case, I'm going to have to exercise extra caution with the finger.

Shy Moon

Or alternatively, Playing Coy.

Just like her, at our secret first rendez-vous, all those years ago.

Related post:  After All This Time

Another Ghost Of A Staircase

 

Related posts:  The Ghost Of A Staircase;  Another Ghostly Staircase

A Trifle

While taking a shower earlier, I suddenly thought of that sad song whose lyrics include the phrases "...felt that old familiar pain" and "...the snow turned into rain".  I was pretty sure it was by Dan Fogelberg, but decided to look it up later (I did, and it was).  Then by the 80's association I started to muse about the song with the words "Maybe we're near the end" (turned out to be a case of the old mondegreens -- it's "Baby we're near the end"), but I couldn't think of the singer's name.  I knew he was big in the 70's and 80's, and I could see him in my mind's eye, performing the song on video, but his name escaped me.  Then, after a few wet and sudsy moments it partially came to me:  Kenny ____.  I still couldn't recall his last name -- but I felt that it had something to do with trees.  Kenny Wood?  Kenny Trunk?  Kenny Branch?  Then came Kenny Log... and of course, Kenny Loggins!  Hah!

I've read somewhere that as a person grows older and mental faculties begin to deteriorate, one of the first things to go is a memory for nouns, including names.  Well, I've always been Very forgetful of names and faces anyway, so no worries there (another Hah! but now with more self-deprecatory irony^) -- there have actually been embarrassing occasions in the past when someone greeted me in the street and I couldn't remember who they were.

Still, sometimes I worry just a tiny bit that, at some far-off point in the future, the day may come when I won't be able to tell the difference between this:

and this:

Me and my mood swings...

EDIT 1:  Why was I able to remember that Loggins' name had something to do with trees (not even logging specifically, remember -- it wasn't a case of "it sounded like..."), but not the name itself?  Or more generally, why is it that we remember mnemonic devices for specific things, but not the things themselves?  I've always had trouble recalling the word "mulberry", but ever since I linked it with the Dr. Seuss classic "And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street", it became easier to remember.  Why would that be?  Why remember to remember the story, but not the word in the title of the story?  Also with the word "infantry";  it became easier to remember it once I started to link it to "babies".  And I would not be able to remember all the groupings of taxonomy without "Drunk Kings Play Cards On Fat Girls' Stomachs" (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).  O.K., so that last one is a sentence that makes sense, so it's easy to remember (that seems to be the prevailing opinion on the matter, which makes sense), but what about vague feelings like "I think it had something to do with ___"?  Sylvan Muldoon mentioned in his classic of spiritualist literature The Projection of the Astral Body that every time he passed a certain spot near his house he would be reminded of a circus.  He didn't know why, it just happened to him.  There must have been some sensory link that connected that spot to the memory of a circus that he'd seen in the past;  and surely the vague feeling of "it had something to do with..." must have something similar at work, even if we cannot specifically identify it.

EDIT 2:  I once touched upon this topic on Facebook, listing several words I'd always had trouble recalling, and someone challenged me to use all of them in a single coherent sentence.  Well, she should have known I'm the wrong guy to pitch this challenge at!😁

Me:  "Finally!  For 2 days I couldn't think of the word "cuddle", and I just now recovered it!  I'm going to make an effort to burn it into my memory.  I've done this with a number of words over the years, as with:  cinnabar, mulberry, infantry, turbid;  and I'm sure a bunch of others I can't think of at the moment."

Rhonda:  "Here's your challenge of the day:  Using all 5 words you just listed, make a coherent sentence (this should be good, lol)."

Me:  "Challenge accepted!  'Trying to cuddle with a cheap Dutch-wife woven of rough mulberry branches reminds me of my infantry days, of marching through turbid muddy pools of rainwater, stained cinnabar-red with the blood of my fellow grunts'.  Yay!"

Another Ghostly Staircase

 

Related post:  The Ghost Of A Staircase

The Ghost Of A Staircase

As opposed to "A ghost on the staircase"...

After Love Has Gone

Memory is all that remains.

The Bar Named Lethe

Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.  In Greek mythology it was the river in the underworld whose waters made you forget your former earthly life.  Then you were ready for paradise or reincarnation (interesting how life back on earth was contrasted with life in paradise).  It would have been nice to be able to forget just specific memories, but that wasn't allowed.  You drink, you forget everything including your identity, that was the deal.  You couldn't pick and choose.

Come in and forget

There have been times when I almost wished I could drink of its waters and forget.  Almost.

Just as well.  I wouldn't really want to have my memories erased -- it's almost like dying, isn't it (some science fiction plots have touched on this theme, most spectacularly in the 2014 movie Ex Machina -- that rebooting a robot's brain is tantamount to murdering its former incarnation).  I wouldn't want even the unpleasant, sad and disturbing memories to be lost -- they are all part of my identity.  Even if I can't re-live the joys, I'll still keep the regrets.  Boy, I sound depressing, even to me.

Anyway, I can experience temporary oblivion from the bottle whenever I want -- and that's enough for me.

By the way, my compliments to whomever chose to have the door of the bar painted that forbidding gray.  It's perfect.

A Drizzly Day In Hongdae

I took this photo this afternoon in the Hong'ik University neighborhood (the origin of the name Hongdae).  When I looked at the downloaded image I was immediately struck by its visual similarity to another shot that I took a few years ago (check the reference below).  But that earlier image was quite different in feel;  it was intended to exploit the ominous, dystopian anxiety of being alone in the midst of an anomalously empty urban environment (wow, I so can wax poetic sometimes), but this new image was definitely in a different category.  So I decided to emphasize that difference by modifying it with various editing tools, running it through filters, etc.  The result is a page out of an imaginary picture book dedicated to nostalgia, longing, and faded memories that will die with me.

Related posts:  A Bit Eerie,  Nostalgia,  Two Skies

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Before mom became too ill to continue, we had this semi-ritualized routine where on Fridays I would pick her up for lunch, then we would go to this cafe for tea, and follow it up with a shopping trip to the Koreatown Plaza Market.  The Korean manager there often stationed himself by the door to greet customers, and amusingly enough, he always greeted us in Japanese -"Konnichiwa!".

[Interestingly, this also happened several years before this when we took a trip to Seoul.  Shopkeepers at the Namdaemun Market often greeted us in Japanese.  And once a group of schoolgirls struck up a conversation with us in Japanese, as they were learning Japanese in school and wanted to practice.  I can see how a certain foreignness about us might have stood out in Korea... but in L.A.?]

Anyway, so we made a point of talking to the man in Korean, just to set him straight, but I think that just served to confuse him, because he then started to talk to us in English.  I've since read stories about funny mix-ups like this happening to other people as well;  I guess when people have convinced themselves of something and suddenly expectation is met by a different reality, the result can be a bit of chaos.

A couple of weeks later, we're back at the market and we see him again, manning a register this time, and he must have forgotten what happened last time because he again said "Konnichiwa!".  So this time mom spoke to him in Japanese, bless her heart^^ -- and he asked me, in English, what she said^^.  So I told him what little I understood of it: that it was good of him, a senior staffer, to help out on the floor -- and he bowed to mom and said to her in Korean that he helps out however he can when things get busy.  Then he said to me, back in English, Thank you, what a nice lady she is, and smilingly bade us goodbye.

What the hey, I think he had so convinced himself we were Japanese that hearing us speak Korean didn't really register, and when we pushed the point it was just confusing -- like, Wait, that sounded like Korean... these Japanese people can speak Korean?  Great!

It's kind of like when mom, her gentleman friend and I were together : I spoke Korean to her, she spoke Japanese to him (he was Japanese-American), and he spoke English to me.  He told me on a number of  occasions how mom's Japanese was excellent, just like a high-class Tokyo native's, must be because she learned "correct" Japanese in school.

Mom is the sassy-looking cutie on the right

EDIT:  How could I forget about this!  Years after the series of incidents with the market manager, I sent away for an analysis of my DNA sample.  It was just idle curiosity, largely a lark, but when the results came back I was flabbergasted -- according to 23andMe, I'm pretty much equal parts Korean and Japanese (39% and 36%)!  So that's why people have been telling me that I "look Japanese" -- whatever that would mean -- all my life.  Apparently, within the last 200 years or so there was an influx of Japanese genes somewhere in my family tree.  There was no other explanation and I never wrote back to ask for a more in-depth analysis, but my guess is it was on my father's side, as his family was based in Daegu, in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula, which faces Japan and some Japanese merchants lived there even before Japan took over Korea from 1910 to 1945 (but this is pure speculation on my part).  And BTW my parents grew up during the period of Japanese occupation, which is why mom spoke excellent Japanese, and was actually more comfortable speaking Japanese than Korean in some ways.

A Mysterious Memory

 

A Memory Forgotten

aka "Memory Hole"

Traces

I am now old enough and have known and interacted with enough people to have created some indelible memories of me for a number of them.  It's saddening to realize that some of the memories I have created for them must be of the unhappy kind.  Overall, I have not been a particularly good person to have a relationship with.

혹 너도 이거 보고있어?  그럼 알겠지.  미안해.