Let me read it to you:
I am walking down a Buenos Aires sidewalk in scuffed shoes that I had intended to polish but never got around to. A whiff of diesel exhaust from an idling truck yanks me from this place and thrusts me into another where I am shivering outside a truckstop looking for a ride, rows of Peterbilts, Kenworths and Freightliners idling in the Texas dawn.
Other times I revisit a plant nursery on Thornhill Drive on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I walk beside my father over a wooden footbridge that spans a creek to reach the rows of potted plants for sale.
Another time I am sitting on the steps of the Opera House in San Francisco. There is no performance; I have ridden the bus from the suburbs and I sit beneath a statue watching the people pass, an adolescent discovering the wide world beyond.
Yet another time, I am on a rented horse climbing a hill of dried grass in Contra Costa County and a storm is brewing in a valley that will one day be submerged by a reservoir. Again and again, I climb that hill.
Nothing ever happens in these memories. There is no danger. Nothing goes wrong. Nothing changes. I just am.
I am waiting in the cold alone.
I am walking beside someone I love.
I am contemplating the world as it passes.
I am looking up at a storm and smell the scent of the animal beneath me.
These are my memories. I burnish them on my sleeve and hold them up to the light. Over and over again. Of all possible memories, these are the chosen ones. They are a reminder that I have lived, that I live still.
I am waiting in the cold alone. I am hitchhiking, throwing myself carelessly into the world. Desperate. Flailing. Praying that someone, anyone will take me.
I am walking beside someone I love before I learn the truth.
I am contemplating the world as it passes, hoping that the world outside will save me, protect me and give me peace.
I am looking up at a storm and smell the scent of the animal beneath me. It is at moments like these where I am held, immobilized firmly between earth and sky, where life overtakes me, that I can surrender. And forget.
It is the moments we pay no attention to that will live forever.
– Kevin Carrel Footer
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