Making Memories

Sometimes my memories seem more like dreams, or maybe all of living is really dreaming. I live most of the day inside my head, reenacting improvised scenes that didn't last long enough, assuming a character who is nearly forgotten to me now.

Today I can be 18 again, at Ziggy's farm, drinking my first bourbon(s), eating Colby Jack cheeseburgers at three in the afternoon. Then back to the barn we'd head for more music making, and after the sun set we'd sit around a bonfire, passing a bottle of Stone Hill red back and forth between us--but mostly just between Dan and me--dreaming up the days ahead, making plans.

I was the first to bed that night, just as the sun was coming up. A few hours later I awoke in a king sized bed with my brother an arm's length away from me, feeling sick and ill at ease.

Meg arrived in the morning (afternoon?), like Kerouac visiting Burroughs in New Orleans. She videotaped Jeff on the dock, on the boat, on the phone. Inside, we watched the World Cup, in disbelief about Zidane, and I felt like I was watching something from another planet, feeling more like a citizen of Riddle than of the world.

Was this one weekend? Or have I wrongly recalled a string of weekends, years apart, a pre-production weekend plus a post-production one? Was that the weekend we watched Spinal Tap on the side of the barn? Does it matter? Who can impose rules on the unconscious?

Or maybe none of this really happened.