Memory Collective VIII
The Memory Collective is the recreation of a project I found on the internet one lazy afternoon at my office. The mission of the Memory Collective is to explore the nature of memory, specifically the act and art of remembering: how we do (and don't) put back together those fragments and shards, those fleeting images and lasting impressions, that reside in our memories. At the start of our project, participants each submit a memory fragment. Each fragment was then passed on to another participant to interpret through the lens of their own memory. Our memories are published as a series in this newsletter. I encourage you to notice what these memories bring up for you: images, emotions, stories, regrets, earworms. What exists on the periphery of our memory? If you missed them, here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh installments.
Kelsey Swintek remembers Evelyn Klotz’s memory:
I have a confession. This project is flawed. As both a participant and administrator of our memory collective, this submission was never anonymous. Even still, I like to think I would’ve recognized her identity immediately. I know I would have, because I struggle to see myself outside of her. Let me rephrase that. I struggle to know myself as other than her.
In my memory, I’m in the room. I hear the whir of the drill securing posts in her gums for the implants she’d receive months later. I taste the blood at the back of her throat and wince as they scrape away more of her mouth. I wish she wasn’t awake for this, that instead of local anesthesia, they just put her under so she could suffer less.
See, I was never in the room. I was on her couch, but I remember her dad describing it to us later. How awful it was, standing there watching the procedure. His encouragement, empathy. As she recovered, we watched One Tree Hill DVDs, or maybe Dawson’s Creek.
She wore a retainer with false teeth that she called a ‘flipper.’ I’d start crying-laughing when I’d look up across the table and she’d position it in her mouth so that her single tooth hung over her bottom lip. It was even funnier when we were with friends who didn’t realize her teeth were fake. We love laughing.
Sometimes I think of us like the Limited Too BFF necklaces I’m so certain that we had: two different pieces of one whole. Most times, I think of us as two of the same. Like the Sterling silver lockets her mom gave each of us when we graduated high school, or the water logged mood rings we wore for years. We wear each other’s clothes, copy and paste each other’s dialogue, share a one bedroom apartment, and one bed.
The line between her experiences and my experiences is hazy and indistinct. I ask her to remember my own milestones, and usually trust her recollection more than my own.
Evelyn Klotz’s memory:
