I find myself telling an anecdote wherein I quote someone, and just as I finish the story, I realize that the person doesn’t speak the language into which I’ve unconsciously translated their words. I can’t for the life of me hear - in my mind - the words they actually said. It’s too late. I’ve translated my perceived experience into my own vernacular. Sometimes curses and all. Certainly, I transcribe their intention, possibly their motivation, but as I pegged them in the fleeting moment.
I believe I’m missing a step in terms of interpersonal communication. This would horrify me, but I spoke to a friend this week, who is also married to someone with a different mother tongue than their own - and they assured me they do the same thing. My experience can’t be an consequence of being uniquely inattentive - we are two. At least.
I’ve been wondering whether this is true for all of us, all of the time. Maybe my friend and I noticed it because the situations were so mundane and the discrepancies so great. I mean, if we continually put the time into listening as we’re told we should, conversations would move at a glacial pace, and we’d never get the shopping done. I think of the marriage counselor’s advice when a conversation begins to heat up: “What I heard you say was…”
“Nei. Jeg sa…”
“Okay. So now I heard you say…”
One. Two. Cha cha cha. Back, Two…
What was I saying?
The truth is, I’m now suspicious of every memory I have.
I have very few visual memories. The past can sometimes creep up on me via music or smells. I can conjure the past with words that tell stories: the past itself being little more than unnamed emotions. When the feeling comes, and I try to “remember”, I put words to a story. It kind of flows like water, or free associations from cards in a familiar deck. This transcription always diffuses the emotions—for the good and the bad.
I tried to find a word for putting words to something, that isn’t tied to articulating, or enunciating—that isn’t about a physical manifestation of the act of creating a story. Do you know of one?
It’s interesting because, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Which makes me think about the role of storytelling in terms of a God, and in terms of articulation, prayers and charms; and all of them in terms of creation.
Can you draw a bicycle from memory? In one experiment only 25% could. I know the tangible experience of a bicycle. I rode one nearly daily for several years of my childhood, ruining the cuffs of how many pairs of pants that caught in the chain? But I’m not among the 25%. I see nothing, I hear nothing, but I can shape everything through a tiny alphabet and hope it’s adequate, and somewhat true.
These questions sit heavier on my heart than usual because I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a memoir. Again. But there is always the question of having to confront myself and the limits of my perspective. I can’t be a heroine in anyone’s story. Certainly not mine. And I am not fond of the cynicism I see as inherent in an anti-hero perspective. But the more often I pick up a memory, the more I turn it over, the more faults I find—in me, and in the circumstances. Timelines never line up. I don’t like myself then. Nor then. Can I ascribe a motive to myself, much less to someone else?
I can’t sort out the elements of my memories into a nice, meaningful arc. That dull, red rubber ball that I caught more than once square on my nose during a game of dodgeball that I was forced to play? (The smell, the sting, the metallic taste of blood.) Where does this go? Insignificant, maybe. But certainly the stuff of metaphor.
It’s like playing a game of solitaire and trying very hard not to cheat.
Write the memoir in 3rd person present. That way you might find a way to distance yourself from your past self - hero, anti-hero, or somewhere inbetween. Interesting re non-visual memories. Mine tend to be visual and visceral, and many I try to avoid (maybe that's why I make up stories around grains of truth).