30 days of night, part 17

[thejunipertree]

01 - Introduction
02 – Your first love
03 – Your parents (this is long as HELL
04 - What you ate today
05 - Your definition of love
06 - Your day
07 - Your best friend
08 - A moment
09 - Your beliefs (photo insensive)
10 - What you wore today
11 - Your siblings
12 - What's in your bag?
13 - This week
14 - What you wore today
15 - Your dreams
16 - Your first kiss

Your favorite memory

It's strange. Over the past few days, I've been mulling this entry over in my head, completely unable to decide what memory classifies as "my favorite". I've had difficulty with a number of these entries, with trying to decide what words needed to be said on the given topic at hand, and that's largely the reason why these have been spread out over far more than the originally 30 days allotted. But deciding on a favorite memory? I wouldn't even know where to begin.

When pressed to describe my favorite anything, I'll hedge for long enough to wiggle out from under the question. I can't pin down a favorite food above all other foods, or a favorite movie. What drink do I like the absolute best or what's the greatest song I've ever heard. Sure, I have a variety of stock answers for these things. I've developed them over the years and said them so many times, their truth has risen to the forefront of the top to the point of almost being reality. But, if you dissect it further- they fall apart.

I compartmentalize everything into segments, connected with events or emotions. There may be an absolute in each grouping, but none in the general category itself. Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility is my favorite film when I'm feeling sick and rundown, but Deep Blue Sea is number one for getting inebriated and giggling a lot (or maybe Return of the Living Dead, it's usually a tie).

But, in an effort to actually answer this question in some fashion, I'll give you a handful of my favorite memories. Some of them I've talked about before, I think.

I.
I'm lying on my back, in the grass, staring up at a faded October night, and I'm not completely sure if the colored lights I'm watching in the sky are from the far away stage or the E coursing through my veins. I can't see me loving nobody but you, for all my life. I want to get up and dance with my two friends, a married couple I have known separately and together for years; their joy and mutual adoration is so clearly emblazoned upon their faces that it hurts to look at them. Later that night, on the slow and silent ride home through the mountains, we'll be watched from the roadside by hundreds of deer so still I'm not entirely sure they're real. Their eyes flash green in the car's headlights.

II.
There's a lone goose in the parking lot, casting about for its absent flock. The night is so peppermint cold in my nose and throat as I chase it around monoliths of plowed snow, laughing in great clouds of grey mist. Its black webbed feet slap the asphalt and I don't have the faintest clue as to what I'm going to do if I actually catch it.

III.
We'd been alternating between driving and hiking through the Pine Barrens for the past several hours, trying to find an abandoned town that turned out to not actually exist. The trail we were currently walking down seemed fairly established, but we still had no idea what we were doing. Late summer, the kind where autumn is three breaths away, so it's still warm out, but nothing resembling oppressive. We come to a widening of the trail, where a strange camp has been made. Piles of clam shells, piles of old blue glass bottles, and a ratty couch.


18 – Your favorite birthday
19 – Something you regret
20 – This month
21 – Another moment
22 – Something that upsets you
23 – Something that makes you feel better
24 – Something that makes you cry
25 – A first
26 – Your fears
27 – Your favorite place
28 – Something that you miss
29 – Your aspirations
30 – One last moment

Comments

[sola.livejournal.com]

I actually went back and read all of them after this one. You are an amazing shard of starlight.