Death by amnesia

I drive along the Uriah Butler Highway. The sun shines directly overhead, reflects off the Mag rims and Spinners, catches bits of coruscation at the mirror, the handles, turning the cars into bodies of bling. The plains are smoking. The smoke puffs across the highway, obscuring what is ahead, lending the day’s drive a bit of mystery, a suggestion of the unknown. I pass a road under construction. My eyes turn, long after I’ve passed, to look at the workmen sweating in their overalls in the bright sun. The earth looks raw, exposed, with that violated air that freshly tilled soil always has. I read the sign nearby. Construction of Edinburgh Boulevard and suddenly it occurs to me, I can’t remember what was there before.

It’s disturbing, this inability to remember. Was it just a continuation of the miles of undulating land that have gone before, the beginning of the many more miles of undulating land that lie ahead? Was it merely grass, svelte and sinuous under the noonday sun, while in the car driving past one feels torpid, corpulent, clumsy from the day’s heat despite the air conditioning being turned on at full blast? Did some shack, stall, shop bravely put on a show there or when construction started was it greeted as a mercy killing of an enterprise that had long been dying, despite the excessive traffic that swarmed past its doors every day? Was the transition easy? Glad?

It’s not the only thing I can’t remember, the only place where memory fails. I pass the road works on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway. The orange cones scream warnings the motorists ignore as they knock them down when they drive past. I do not remember what was there before either. It is unsettling, this forgetfulness. How easily I’ve forgotten what was once everyday, commonplace. The National Library confuses me. It hasn’t yet managed to look comfortable in its surroundings. It is the girl in the moir? silk gown and heels in front the stage at a cooler fete. It is a vegan at a wild meat barbecue, the guy in the Metallica t shirt and multiple body piercings at a church harvest. Yet I cannot remember what was there before. I recall reading about pumpkin vines growing on the site while it was going through its inordinately long gestation period. But that is all I remember.

What was there before? I do not know. If I were older perhaps these missing chunks would make me panic. Maybe I would have stocked up on ginkgo (is that the herb that’s supposed to improve memory? I don’t recall). As it is, it is still disquieting. I wonder what else I’ll forget. It feels like a Stephen King novel, a Sci-Fi movie you watch late at night on cable because you never got around to going to the cinema to see it and you weren’t sure it was worth the cost of the ticket. People mention things that have happened and I react in shock. I’m appalled, until their expressions convey the fact that this is old news and as I try to sift my brain to discover what prevented me from hearing about these shocking events it occurs to me. Yes, I did hear about them. It’s just that I’d forgotten.

Maybe I’m not the only one who easily forgets. Perhaps it is human nature, part of the process of regeneration, a way of ensuring that the propagation of the species continues. For if one is busy recollecting the past, it hinders one in going about the business of securing one’s future, I would imagine. I’m not really good at these genetic/biological theories. But it makes sense. Take for example our own attempted coup. If our country had kept fresh in its collective memory the events of that time how could we have moved forward, as though nothing has ever happened? Our success is worthy of praise; there are children well past the age of reason to whom the words attempted coup have no meaning.

Abu Bakr is a man to admire, a hero to look up to because he has given a father, a cousin, a brother a “wuk”. And a religion. And so those who have died, those who were maimed, be it either physically, spiritually or emotionally, must feel as though theirs is a surreal existence. They lost a limb during what? A gun was pointed at your head by whom? You lost your business when? Then perhaps it is only in talking the person, by a sharp incline of the head and a downward shifting of the eyes that they indicate that yes, now they recall. They’d forgotten. George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I wonder, what past are we condemned to repeat. Comments? Write suszanna@hotmail.com