Avoiding or Repeating a Mistake
If I could I would avoid making mistakes. At the very least I would avoid repeating the same mistake…something like, those who don't remember are doomed to forget. That was about remembering to remember the past atrocities. So they aren't repeated. The curse of forgetting to remember.
I often talk to myself as I drive or walk to the next appointment, the next obligation. "Elizabeth Jane, what were you thinking? What were you going to do?" I use my middle name as if it will create in me some sort of determination not to forget what it was I am trying to preserve lest it go the way of other bits of thought and purpose.
I write notes to myself all through the night. After visiting an Andy Warhol retrospective at the SF MOMA a few years back, Nico and Dasha gave me a cube of note paper. With "Brillo" planted on the side. A cube with a hole for a pen. But only the black, roller ball. The ones I use for everything. I hope never to repeat the mistake of carrying one of these in my green, nylon Japanese folding backpack. The one I bought years ago at another MOMA, this one in New York. The pen periodically lost its top and finally the top stayed off long enough for the pen to leak onto the green nylon.
If only I could have retrieved all of those leaky pens before they ruined clean, soft fingers or white t-shirts. Worst of all during miles suspended while traveling to meet family or to wander foreign streets and unnamed museums. Leaky pens, I would avoid.
I talk to myself as if in anticipation of the next omission. I want to stay on track, not get distracted. I would avoid the distraction which Robert is sure has led to any number of falls. To being subverted on my path to a meeting or a restaurant as I engage a cell phone conversation I am sure I must have, now.
I have tripped in my own house, rushing to get a toddler ready for school during a remodel which left a large, gaping hole into which I fell and scraped. Finishing a lovely meal on my birthday and then falling forward, tripping over rough sidewalk while distracted into the phone. Breaking both wrists. Years later more broken sidewalk, gleefully ignored after finally getting out of the womb of home to swim in the local pool and suspend the notion of a shut down and being inhibited from just living.
If I could, I would remember all the details without the late-night notes or talking to myself, addressing Elizabeth Jane as if she was a child to be warned, reprimanded, reminded. If I could I wouldn't forget names, like Bill and Michael who I see every week at the Farmer's Market. Tall and slim, but they look alike. And their names are too deceptively simple to remember. But they lavished so much attention on Cinnamon, how dare I forget their names even if they minimize such a lapse.
We are supposed to learn from our mistakes. As if each time there is one, there will only be a new one, not the same one. I have learned to write everything down, somewhere. I wonder if I stopped doing so, would the pile of post its which line my brain and the Brillo pad on the dresser suddenly become blank. Would there be more space not for avoiding or repeating, but for growing and flourishing. For newness and surprise. Rather than for a stern talking to: "Oh, I'm so stupid. How could I forget?" Perhaps Elizabeth Jane would be just a bit kinder and more forgiving. She forgives others so much more easily.