A Writer’s Attachment to Things

I have a terrible memory.

Wait, let me clarify. I have a terrible memory for dates and timelines and names and historical events but I have a beautiful gift for sensory recall of emotions and space. I guess all humans have that to some degree, the feelings of nostalgia that wash over us when we hear a favorite song from long ago or smell the cologne that reminds us of that first crush in grade-school.

When I was 16 my dad bought me a used Toyota Corolla. It was green. I continued to drive that car, lovingly known as “The Green Machine,” for another 16 years until it met an untimely demise.

I cried real tears the day I had to say goodbye to that car. Not because I’m so obsessed with cars but because of what it represented to me.

I have come to believe, in my more seasoned years of life as a writer, that perhaps it is a by-product of the job, this “attachment” to things.

It isn’t so much the remembering that I relish in, but the retelling that allows a sort of reliving of the moment. I read somewhere that being a writer allows you to live life twice – once in the living and second in the telling.

“As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. …This is our life and it’s not going to last forever. There isn’t time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.”

-Natalie Goldberg

I admit that what I write is fiction. It’s all made up. And yet, every quirky personality trait and gust of wind that blows in a story is a stolen artifact from some part of my existence. In a way, I am a collector. A tourist of life that picks up idiosyncrasies and strange smells the way one might collect white stones on a walk along the beach.

And as a narrative unfolds, ideas spring forth suddenly like a spirited game of Whac-a-Mole at the skating rink and I use them. I don’t question where they come from, no, that would be rude. I simply live in the stored memory and let it bleed from my murky subconscious into the world I am creating.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anaïs Nin

Sensory memories are odd in that they don’t often play out like a linear story. These types of recall are fuzzy and pre-date tangible nouns and adjectives. In my opinion, that’s the hoardable nugget of what I like about writing. I might equate it with a scientist naming a species. I discovered it and now I get to translate it into the most accurate words possible so that the reader may either experience it for the first time along with the characters or relive their own memories.

So, while I try not to be a hoarder of things, which is hard because I like to keep everything, I endeavor to be a hoarder of experience.

Would I like to know what it’s like to ride a motorcycle? Yes. If you were mean to me in high-school, might I kill a character resembling you in spectacular fashion? Perhaps. Will the briny smell of ocean water or the phenomenon of “summer feet” callouses ever work its way into a description? Maybe. Will I someday write about a character that drives a green car off into the sunset feeling free, young and beautiful? Absolutely.