Tonight I am thinking on the difference between remembered and forgotten. A friend sent me a section of a Juan Ramon Jimenez book of aphorisms called The Complete Perfectionist. One: "Forgetting is almost natural; memory, almost artificial."I nodded my head when I read that. Yes, I thought. Yes. But it took me all of ten seconds to wonder Wait, an aphorism with two 'almosts'? That's allowed? I think of an aphorism as an essential truth; I think of an essential truth as immutable. (I think I might be too fixed in my thinking.)
But here I appreciate that Jimenez was leaving a space between almost natural // almost artificial. Here we almost find the neither forgetting nor the remembering: the never-remembered -- therefore, the never-forgotten.
A few weeks ago I had a dream where someone very carefully explained to me that I had to know a thing before I could forget it. I was totally overwhelmed by the essential truth of that -- so overwhelmed, I immediately started looking for my car keys. In the dream I knew that I could never have forgotten my keys had I not remembered they were needed to drive my car. What's funny is that in real life I don't even own a car. In fact, I am trying right now to remember the last time I drove.
The dream was about my mother, of course. My mother, who died thirty-two years ago today. To carry the metaphor, she is the car I don't have. There exist no corresponding keys.
