Twenty Minutes

It has been thirty five years since he first forgot his name. The whirlwind of life escapes the tremulous fingers of his memory. He wondered when the absence of a past crossed from the inevitable into the desired. Now he lingers momentarily on a vignette of recent occurrence, savoring the sweet colors of an image etched in the labyrinthine library of the cluttered mind, before erasing it in one clean, fresh motion of mental exertion. Like the faded stains of graffiti on a sad wall, his memories no longer exist in individual alcoves but merge into a concatenated collage of cloudy and incomplete stories, each one woven seamlessly into the other, quantitatively impressive but absolutely meaningless.

Was this a gift of his? A duster mind to the chalkboard of time, he does not remember when these powers were granted by a jealous God, a God who laughs in the faces of men and their finite, infinitesimal minds that hold only the lifetime of one, but secretly yearns for the sweet nostalgia that sprouts from the effervescent memories of beings incapable of omnipotent grandeur.

He is eighty, or is it seventy? He avoids reflective surfaces, devilish daguerreotypes that burn his eyes and remind him about the need to forget. The left hand does not want to know what the right hand does. Erase away, but remember not to tell me about it.

He is a free man every twenty minutes, the time he unconsciously allots himself before weevils penetrate the fragmented quilt of memory. He experimented before. One hour. Too long. Five minutes. Too brief. Twenty minutes, the only notion of time in his life.

Pleasure dictates much of his physical movement. The senses become surgical tools, unraveling the dazzling panoply of the now. Taste buds become enhanced, clandestine conversations serenade sprightly ears, smells waft toward a nose engaged in an endless saturnalia.

The icy chills of a wintry night seep through his cotton jacket. He ambles along Nathan Road, content to let the mad throngs littering the pavements nuzzle him into the soporific warmth of soft down. He is in Hong Kong now, but it does not matter. Causeway Bay, Lan Kwai Fong, Mongkok, Wan Chai. Nolita, Loisaida, Calais, Cannes. It is all the same to him.

He walks into a dilapidated porridge shop, bright red letters pasted on a greasy glass window, steam rising from a dirty metal cauldron, masking the face of the cook who prefers to remain hidden behind the stewing suffocation of pork bones and boiling broth.

This is his last meal. He will die tonight. The droning chants of Buddhist monks and the sharp scent of incense permeate the large hall. Joss sticks lie planted in the earthenware pots like a field of sweet corn, rows and rows, as far as the eye can see. Kneel. Take this cup. In the cup are thin red tablets with Chinese characters etched on every single one. Hold the cup firmly with both hands. Shake the cup until one of the tablets falls to the floor. A date, a time, a word. He will die tonight. It has been written in red.

Father, forgive me for I have sinned. This is my first time attending confession. I have committed the sin of forgetting. What is my penance?

Last meals. Last meals. One could repeat the phrase, but experience tells us that finality occurs singularly. On many occasions, coffee shop conversations revolve around this question, facetiousness peppering thoughts and language. We speak as if death is but a mere afterthought, a burden carried by others, an impossibility in our own illuminated, shapely lives, lives that build roads, roads that build futures, futures we know and control.

He dispenses with such idealistic coquetry. He keeps only one memory, or at least he thinks he does. Perhaps memory is not simply a feat of linear interaction. Perhaps it swims through layers of sensory engagement, one object leading to another, and another, and then another, before resting indolently on a fragment of one’s past.

In his case, the process begins with his final meal. He seems to have left little markers in his mind, shiny fist size pebbles scattered at discrete but essential locations, waiting to be picked up or noticed, waiting to be utilized.

He does not know this. His mind has separated itself, much like a man carrying a map to bring him back home only to find that his destination is to be his final resting place. He finds only a small piece of paper in his deep pocket, hidden from the clawing nails of forgetfulness.
Written in deep blue, it spells a place, a time, a dish. How wonderful it would be to allow scraps of paper to dictate life. Read. Act. Read. Act.

The porridge arrives. Sweet boiled snow quivering and shaking, releasing explosive surges of retaliatory steam. The nondescript smell transforms the landscape. The familiar scent of softened grain opens the gates of his mind for the last time.

Like an old silent movie played in reverse, zebra images take awkward steps in the wrong direction, as if time were rolling back its little yo-yo. Hong Kong, the porridge shop, then the cautious recognition of a familiar voice, then a plane ride, then the musty brown of Angkor Wat, then the smell of freshly fallen leaves at Fort Tyron Park in New York, then the feeling of warmth as the sun bathes down on an olive face in Kandy.

These images move like a comic strip, each incrementally different from the other, and when flipped quickly, forms a moving image. In this case, the individual pieces are already moving images. What is formed is some resemblance of a face. A face of tears. A woman’s face. Her features are strikingly beautiful. There is solemnity in eyes that have seen too much pain.
She seems to reach out to him. Like déjà vu, he is given a microsecond of clarity. It is too quick to verbalize or even consider. Yet he feels a surge of emotion, an inexplicable release from captivity. Who is she? He knew for that moment. He felt for that moment.

Can you forget and die fulfilled?