Lane wrote in his LJ entry about the overflow of emotions from memories that just popped back into his head one night when he was in Kyoto. What really shook me was his comment near the end

My memories should be enough, by themselves, to keep me going forever. And yet memories are memories--as soon as they happen, they begin to fade, and they keep fading. We chase after new experiences, the chance to create new memories, constantly. I'm no exception. But I do think this experience has given me the courage to slow down, at least a little.

If I don't, I'll drown in my own memories before I turn 30.

About one year before his experience (thus about 13 months before today), S took me with her on a retreat with alums from MIT fencing. The people there were cool, but I still felt like an outsider without the common bond of a sport, though the feeling was minimal due to the extreme hospitality of the host. There were many people there that day, and all of us cannot sleep in the small lake-side cabin. S and I brought a tent and we set it up on the waterfront.

It was night, and the bunch of us just finished watching Cannibal the Musical and someone decided to put in an extraordinarily bad movie. S and I decided that we'll call it a night and retreated to our tent. We were just lying there, talking occasionally, and listening to the gentle waves splashing on the shore. And, it burst.

That summer I was boarding at Epsilon Theta in Brookline, MA. My mom had decided to move back to Taiwan after my sisters got accepted to colleges. We held a garage sell and all, and ended the lease of the apartment. Our stuff got scattered: my things and some of our family belongings were put in storage; other things and my sisters' college needs were left in the care of my uncle. My sisters went back to visit Taiwan with mom (they are the ambitious kind, and fully expected themselves to work internships during the summer breaks once they are in college, and was worried that that summer would be the last in which they can go back to their birthplace for a few years to come). And there I was. Along in the states. It was possibly the furthest I've been from my family: there has always been a person or two from my family near me; I went to college in my adopted home-state. The furthest I've been would be my trips to Chicago that took me roughly 900 miles from home. During that summer, we were at opposite sides of the globe.

And it was a particularly slow summer: it was the first I didn't have a definite summer job. I was pretty much on my own schedule, and my job consisted of typesetting a textbook. I worked from the leisure of the House.

So I got to think. A lot. During the day S goes into campus for her UROP, and mostly no-one is at the house: all the other boarders have summer jobs or kept odd hours. In the beginning, I browsed the web or watched Anime to take a break from typing. But I get tired of that. So at times, I just sit around and daydream. And in those times, I only have my memories to go on.

Memories are funny things. The more I think about them, the less they can be grasped. I tried to think about my childhood. I tried to remember what happened during Kindergarten. I tried to paint the faces of my first grade teachers. I tried to reiterate my pet phrases from elementary school. And after a while, everything became blurry. The faces became indistinct, the names smashed into each other and reformed into syllables that have no meaning, the places devolve into a vague feeling of "thereness". I no long could distinguish between actual memories and my invention, between what happened and what I wished could happen. And then, I was scared.

The summer of 2004 marked the end of 7 years in this country, during which I only visited my 祖國 (Vaterland) once. And amidst the hard work of getting used to a foreign land, learning the intricacies of a foreign culture, getting accepted to college and internships, I had left behind my memories.

When growing up, I live right next to my elementary school. I pass by it almost every other day even after graduating and moving on to middle school. And all was so familiar to me, so close to me, that I never worried that one day, I might not get to see them again. It is not until the loss that we began to treasure the being. And as a carefree youngster, I do not understand those sentiments so oft read in books of poetry that I very much enjoy. To me, at seventh grade, the 25 city blocks that surrounded my home was pedestrian and not worth paying attention to. And how I now regret not carefully observing every building, every store, every window, every brick. It all became vague colors and concepts: this building there had 4 floors to it, that one had a basement. This one here was red, that one was yellow. There's a tree behind it somewhere. Shapes were fudged, and size cannot be trusted: I was short and young when I made those imprecise observations, the proportions and the awe they inspired will most likely seem common place to this more experienced and worldly I.

So that night, in the tent, in a flash, many things that I have wanted to remember came to mind. So clearly and distinct. It was not sequential, nor evening moving. Those were snapshots from my brief life--they were snapshots of all five senses. I could see the blazing sun shining over the athletic field, I could feel the warm breeze in late spring, I could hear the cheering of fellow students, I could taste my own salty sweaty, I could smell the unseasonal dry air, I could touch the rough ground, and I could feel the rush of excitement--the excitement that only comes from playing in the finals of the intramural dodgeball tournament. And this entire picture, with hundreds like it, all collided at once and went boom! There were bits and pieces everywhere, all mixed up, yet all so clear. I had the impression that, in that split moment, I just saw everything that I wanted to see for the past few weeks, but at the same time, it is as if I didn't see at all. And then the fear happened.

I started talking. I started telling S all about the one thing that scares me the most. And I started crying. At the moment, I just knew that as I go on aging, layers and layers of memory will be wrapped onto that tiny corpus that I just saw. And each time that I have another burst of recollections in the future, there will be more information that gets presented. It will be more and more overwhelming, but also less and less clear. I realized that I will forget.

Growing up, my memory is always one of the thing I am most proud of. Of course, it has caused uneasiness in social situations: I remember embarrassing moments or fierce arguments much longer then other people involved. I remember parks I went to when I was 4 and restaurants I went to when I was 5. I remember the first time I put on a tie (for the wedding of someone related to someone who works with my dad). I remember breaking down in tears when I got my first Chinese exam back in 7th grade, I remember slapping a friend on his face in fifth grade all because he didn't agree with me, I remember all the fictitious "facts" that I misunderstood from books way beyond my level when I was in second grade (heh, I once thought that if one inverts an hourglass in space the sand wouldn't fall--not because of lack of gravity, but because of lack of air). I remember the story books my mom read to me when I was 4, and I remember the games my sisters and I invented when I was 5. But I begin to realize that all those memories are getting more and or abstract. I don't remember what exactly caused me to slap my friend, nor why I cried when I got a bad score on a test. I don't remember more than occasional plot twists and that annoying parrot from my mom's stories, and I certainly don't remember why I always chose to play the part of the "bad guys" when playing those games we invented.

Memories are a funny thing. If I put time on the real-line, and color in what I remember. As time goes by, bits and chunks starts to fall out. And little by little, what I remember looks more and more like the Cantor dust. More and more they become impressions of an event and no longer the event itself.

And I became afraid. I don't want to lose those memories of childhood. If possible, I want to be able to go back and relive those carefree days. I miss the times when I played hard and cared naught for the consequences. I miss the times when I sat around a read for hours undisturbed. I miss the times when playing badminton was just me and mom swatting a plastic birdie in the field, and not a real competitive sport. I miss the times when I would sneak up to the video camera and make snide comments about my sisters during a family picnic, which dad had to painfully edit out one by one. I miss the times when the children can gather for a game of "red light green light" and fully trust the others not to cheat. I miss repeatedly being beaten by dad in Chinese chess, basketball, ping-pong, soccer, Tetris, logic puzzles, speed math, and, come to think of it, just about everything we do together. I just can't let go.

Perhaps it is a Chinese mentality. We just don't seem to be able to give up. We find reports of old Chinese men living along in an apartment, and upon death, neighbors find that he hoards everything: newspaper, magazines, dishes, paper plates, potted plants, dead potted plants, dollar-a-piece souvenirs from tourist-rip-off shops in airports. I can't get rid of anything that has sentimental value. When I was six, we moved. My mom had planned that we will toss away my old, beat-up, dirty little pillow that I've been using since I was 2. I cried and screamed until mom relented so I could hold-on to it. When I moved to the US, dad told me to give away my hot-wheels (or the Taiwan, ah-hem, "version", thereof) collection to Charity (for the new Children's hospital): I individually bade farewell to those little plastic cars. I still have children's literature from when I was 3. I guess I'll be reading those to my children in a few more years. And the memento from various camps that I went to when I was a kid, now long faded or broken, still has their places (even when I have no place to display them, they still live in boxes). In the same way, I hoard my memories. I do not want to lose them, in case one day they might "come in handy".