All But Irretrievable

Trying to recall my Thursday.  The guests had just left.  A new guest pending.  He'll be at the airport later today.  Catch up, certainly.  Obligations, that arrived, due.  I remember one call that went well.  And then another that didn’t go so well.  And then the day evaporates into mist from two days on, looking back. 

First stop, look at my calendar.  It doesn’t help.  There’s nothing lodged.  What about my email?.  I remember receiving one.  Another.  But they don’t dispel the mist of what it was I was actually, working on, fretting about, diverting myself from on that day.  There’s nothing till the lone calendar entry of a phone call at 9:30PM.  I remember that call,  remember being tired, sitting there in my comfy chair.  And then I went to bed, shortly thereafter.

It is disconcerting to not be able to remember much about something so important as a day.  If you were Dostoyevsky being brought out in the morning to the executioner's ground, twenty-four hours would represent a life’s worth of time and possibility.  And were I to magically have the view back in, unobscured, every subsequent moment would be essential, a crucial, obvious step towards how I arrived at today. 

But my mind has filed much of those waking hours off in a folder of ‘no particular significance.’  A storage bin further off the main flow of brain power.  Most of life, one suspects, is filed away in this manner.  Were I to have spoken with the delivery man that day and our acquaintance filed off, all but irretrievable, I would sense something immediate, were I to see the man again, right?  I know you.  I’m not sure how.  But I know you.  I met you.  I recognize you.  And perhaps, I could have pulled out our encounter, though more likely I would have been left with nothing but a nagging suspicion from a file, deeply obscured.

Thursday, 5/17/18