Beached
Discussing work is over. The chemist and the businessman are now sharing personal matters – I hear through my earplugs the muffled mention of trips to Interlaken and Zermatt. They seem to agree that those two places are the best but, perhaps predictably, neither has been impressed with Lausanne or Montreux. Lights are out and I am trying to finish a presentation before resting my eyes. They are excited and loud, and again perhaps predictably, the more I try to concentrate on my work the more details of their conversation is being absorbed by my tired brain. I drift back to your shores, gradually but unmistakably. Let me know if you need any information or anything. Sure will. You never will. The passenger next to me is sleep but his screen is on showing us flying somewhere over southern coast of Alaska near Anchorage.
I could never reconcile the push with the pull. Can I see the pictures you took? Sure, but they are the same as yours, same subjects, same shots, same angles. I won’t see them. It is finally quiet. All I hear is the earplug-filtered faint hum of the engines. I save my presentation. My head is pounding. You think you have cured me, cured from an obsession unconsciously generated to feed my sense of self-pity. Or so I presume. Over lunch, I watched a documentary about hyperthymesia – a condition of continuous memory, one with no gaps or blur. A very small number of people can remember almost all of what has happened to them in their lives, unable to forget, remembering everything without making any attempt at doing so. You think looking away from my wounds would make them heal faster. Perhaps. Or perhaps you are looking away from your own. For hyperthymestics, joys and sorrows of life alike always remain fresh, easily retrievable, no matter how many years separate them from such experiences. There are no winds strong enough to fill up my sails and push me away. I am beached.