Memory fading? Aw, don’t sweat it. [Guest Post]

Guest post by Joel H.

I would not exactly characterize myself as a fan of the band Incubus, but as their song “11am” is the only one I know that speaks to the modern condition of trash — garbage, refuse, rubbish — I could not help but hear its lyrics in my head last week as I found a true discarded gem in the apartment trash room:

“Seven A.M. / the garbage truck beeps as it backs up / and I start my day thinking about what I’ve thrown away.”

Here’s what I found: a meticulously crafted and apparently oft-used Expo whiteboard-turned-parking-map made in the image of our local streetscape. The roads are labeled; the outline of the National Cathedral is clearly visible; and a weekly calendar at the top allows for you to mark not only where you parked your car, but on what day you last moved it. It is an intriguing and brilliant piece of work that I could hardly believe someone would simply “throw away.”

This got me thinking. The beauty of the map (apart from its immense practicality for those of us who still live in this apartment suite, not to mention the “look what I found in the trash!” allure) is what I imagine this map has seen. In the dust of the dry-erase markers, collected in the lines and crannies of the map itself, is the day-to-day personal history of–whom? A newly married couple? An entire family? A lonely bachelor (ahem)?

I suppose it speaks to the fact that change, at least as we experience it on a daily or normal basis, is exactly that: normal. It is in tiny increments that our memory begins to fade, as we forget where we last parked the car; months and years pass in a flash while we live at one address, if only until it comes time to move again. Then, the foundations and formulations upon which we lived as people of the day-to-day, like this map, become useless, and it becomes apparent just how much things have indeed changed. Aw, don’t sweat it.