memories, mountain lions

REM to reality in ten minutes flat.  I awoke convinced that Eliot had adopted a baby mountain liong--through a microwaved cup of tea through a frantic bike ride through three gulps stolen coffee--until I saw Rolly (sleepy-eyed, always in that corner, writingwritingwriting) and came close to asking, 

"And how is the mountain lion today?" 

before I realized that I had been dreaming.

Perhaps I should have asked anyway.

I am reading about memory.  An author told me that memories are not, in fact, stored as accurate images in the corners of our heads, just waiting for the right tools to scrape them out; but rather, they are reconstructed.  This book is fucking me up.

Now memories are interrupting my day (Danny Umlauf passing out on the lawn, sticking grass up his nose until his mother told us he had a seizure).  

I cannot complete 

(walking down railroad tracks with my father at night, etching lines into rusted rails with my fingertips) 

a thought without 

(Act 1, Scene 4 in Miracle on 34th Street)

a moment clamping down on

(6AM on a bus to southern Indiana, a blonde head asleep on my shoulder)

my brain, insisting that

(a funeral for someone I do not know)

I record it

(particular glances, carnival rides, books read only at night)

immediately.

And how is the mountain lion today?  I almost forgot to ask.