Shimmers

[rejectomorph]

I have this vague image in my mind of a moment when I was sitting in our car, which was parked on a busy commercial street. In this image, the street has diagonal parking, which was once common on suburban commercial strips around Los Angeles. I'm looking at the fronts of the shops, and the pedestrians passing by, and I'm hearing the traffic passing behind the parked car. I must have been no more than three or four years old. This is one of my earliest memories. At times, this image will spring into my consciousness, and for the briefest time be as vivid as though I were living it right now.

It's like a few frames of a movie flashed on a screen, and then the movement stops and there is only a faded and uncertain still image. I think I know exactly where this scene was, but this single image does not contain enough detail for me to be certain. Most other fragmentary memories I retain from that time I can place very specifically, in a particular room or on a particular street. The location of this image (and a few others), remains in some doubt.

I have no idea why this bothers me. I'm sure that I would not benefit in any way from recalling with certainty the details of that moment and knowing beyond any doubt where it took place-- other than laying to rest this sense of displacement I feel whenever the image comes to mind. But for some reason, that particular image has haunted me for years. If it turns out to be true that, at the moment of death, one's life flashes in review, then this scene is the first one for which I will be looking. I doubt I'll ever solve the mystery in any other way.

---

The rain tonight has been silken soft, and its sound as subtle as a cat's purr. Dim light filtered through a curtained window up the block has made a patch of dark pavement gleam, and I fancy the gleam to be a shimmering doorway through which I might pass in some dream. I can't even imagine what I might discover then.

Comments

[marseille.livejournal.com]

But were you alone in the car, or was there someone with you? That could account for the discomfort.
I'm able to remember early memories like that, too, but none of them are very interesting. The fact that it surfaces out of context probably is what bothers you. Also, you seem to enjoy knowing WHERE every place is. If you would happen to stumble on a picture of that street, I bet you'd be delighted to have all the pieces fall into place.

[rejectomorph]

I'm sure I wasn't alone. I didn't get to stay in the car alone until I was maybe seven or eight. As I said, I think I know where it was, but I can't be positive. That particular location is quite familiar to me, and I have seen pictures of it from around that time, and I was there as often as once a week, and never less than once a month, for at least two decades (the entire block has since been wiped out for new construction.) That's the main reason I find that memory annoying-- that I should know the place so well, and yet be uncertain of this one image that is probably from there.

The uncertainty leaves open two alternate possibilities: That there was another place very similar, about which I have no other memories and which I can't identify at all; Or that I imagined this moment entirely, or cobbled it together out of multiple actual events from more than one place. I find this uncertainty aggravating, but I don't associate any discomfort with the moment itself (assuming it did take place.) It bothers me because most of my early memories, however sketchy, I can reliably place very specifically. I don't like having an exception to the rule.