remember // never forget

 

Thinking, breathing, moving
All of this
Remember, never forget
All of this
- Reversal of Man

//

H,

When I received your text several years later, it affected me in a way that surprised me.

//

Nostalgia feels like a constant in my life; experiences rolling through my mind like a continuous movie.

I think about a band I saw once in a garage back in the early 2000’s and NEED to immediately know who it was, listen to the songs again.

I remember a friend of a friend and wonder how they’re doing. I search half-remembered names on social media, scroll endless pictures for that familiar face.

I have a vague memory of a time and I want to go back to that time and relive it.

I return to a sleepy town on the Central Coast over and over and it feels wonderful but can only be a reset, not a life.

//

“We went out of our way to avoid each other’s inner lives”

Your words through the phone and also
through me, and although you could not see
my face turned red at the bluntness;
the truth

how could we have ignored it for so long?

//

The intimacy.
It was something I wasn’t used to seeing from you.
But at the same time, it was the same intimacy I knew well
exchanged in brief spurts mostly in those long after-hours
under the moon;
car rides
bike rides
walks

//

I don’t recall exactly how we  met. It may not be as important as the actual time we spent together. I found immediate familiarity in the sights & smells of that house you and your mom shared;
Beans slow cooking on the stove, smell of onions // jalapenos. A strange comfort in speaking Spanish to her when I could string some words together. The way she smiled, like my own Tia in Los Angeles whose presence receded from my life as I grew older.
Losing touch with family…something I didn’t think about until I typed that sentence just now.

//

You carve out these intimate relationships with people; experience laughter & pain & yes even sorrow, but you never address it.
Then, something hits upon something else. And suddenly it’s there, hanging.
I can recall several times it felt like the facades connecting us would crumble and we’d be our true vulnerable selves.

But something kept it all in. Either us or [   ]

//

H,

One of my favorite memories is staying up all night with you, trying to screen print patches of a punk band we were  obsessed with. Anaheim felt so peaceful that night; a cool wind and the prominent smell of night jasmine wafting in & out of your garage.
I don’t remember exactly how the night went. You probably cooked up something with those soy protein curls you always bought at the Vietnamese grocery store down the street. We likely watched some M*A*S*H since you had the entire series on DVD. A trip down to the corner liquor store for sodas and junk food. I’m sure you played records and we let that noise fill the silence in-between talking shit and speaking truths.

//

The invisible hems that keep us simultaneously together & apart

//

“Cities inside of us like bits of glass that would work their  way out of the skin in years to come”
    -  Sesshu Foster

//

H,

  That’s how Orange County feels to me;
painful and always
there

//

Punk a way to ignore
put on hold but
more than that
a chance to throw away
home(s), build new shelters
for each other.

//

H,

I remember us driving down Beach Blvd. and stopping at a gas station. We were, maybe, coming back from Vinyl Solution Records & Tapes in Huntington Beach. Or from visiting our mutual friend at his grandparent’s house in Fountain Valley. As I was pumping gas, he went inside for a soda and some chips. Staring at both of us with a sort of disgust on his face, was a tall white man with a long beard and a common “white power” symbol advertised prominently on his shirt.

I had been completely oblivious, unaffected.

//

H,

I know it took a lot of convincing for your mother to move back to Mexico. One day, she simply wasn’t there anymore. Years later I ask how she’s doing. You reply that she’s living in a tiny town near a body of water.
“She’s happy,” you say.

You look genuinely happy too.

//

We continually lose touch

but maybe that’s okay.

We  always seem to find
our way(s) back.

//

H,

Who’s idea was it to speak Spanish in white spaces? We’d speak our native tongue(s) and laugh at the idea that no one around us knew what we were talking about. I knew my grammar was fucked up, but you always understood.

A chance to speak a tongue that was no longer mine.

Something I never said to you aloud.

//

There’s a music lyric that I think about often from a hardcore band that was prominent in the 90’s youth is wasted on the youth

Maybe the point is just to not forget that you felt young, ever.

//

H,

The last time we hung out you picked me up. We went to the pulga and scoffed at the man with the “punk” tent and then ended up at a zine fest.

Afterwards we ate meat for the first time in front of each other, both laughing at the past.

//

It had been a long time. Youth tends to get away from you. Those years blurred together where I’m unsure where one memory  begins and ends.

[a loop]

//

love always, your friend