i remember the apparatus

i can almost remember being young

when i peer through the microscopic lens back to my childhood, i can almost see past the
smeary glaze of nostalgia
i can almost see
i can almost remember

i remember playing with my friends from across the street in the gravel and potholes between
our houses
i remember backyards that went on forever
i remember church functions with pies and hot dogs
i remember seeing it all through the microscopic lens of an RCA camcorder
i really do remember

i remember falling in love the day after learning how to add and subtract fractions
i remember straw-blond hair
i remember when she knew my name in second grade and i imagined us as old people sharing a
nursing home bed together
you see, i haven't forgotten

i haven't forgotten the way it feels

not really

i haven't forgotten the day i played with one of my friends from across the street and we made a
new friend who wanted us to come play at his house
i remember his parents weren't home and thinking that was weird
i remember he led us around to his backyard and down some stairs whose alleyway enclave
surrounded a sunken door that opened to a basement bedroom of sprawling proportionswide-open
spaces with recently-painted walls and ceilings of overcast beige enshrouding the sparse furniture and
cardboard boxes filled with toys
i haven't forgotten that i knew toys were in those boxes because someone had written 'TOYS' on
the side of those boxes in block capital letters
you see, it's hard to forget things like that

it's hard to forget when my new friend reached inside one of the cardboard TOY boxes and took
out the apparatus and i thought he was about to show us some newfangled virtual reality thingamabob
that we were all going to sit around and wait our turns to play
i couldn't forget when he told us the apparatus recorded the hidden crazy thoughts that come
rising to the surface of your mind in the moments right before you fall asleep and dream
i remember he told us the apparatus played your thoughts back like a record getting played on
the radio, but the reception is kinda staticky, like you're just one click away from the right station, it's
weird man, you can hear yourself thinking these weird-ass thoughts that make no sense and it's the
same shit you think in your head right before you fall asleep, and maybe some of it you wanna
remember when you wake up but you always forget
i can't forget things like this
 i can't forget when my friend asked our new friend if he could put on the apparatus, but he got
told it don't work that way, that when you put on the apparatus the first time it had to prick something
inside your head in the spot right between your eyebrowsa teeny-tiny chip which recorded your
sleepytime thoughts right before you fell asleep, which means you gotta go sleep first before you put on
the apparatus again
i remember my friend asked Does it hurt?
Does what hurt?
The chip thing, I mean it really needs to stick a chip inside your head? That dont sound right.
The recording chip? Na man, said our new friend, it's no worse 'n someone pinchin you on the
forehead with their nails like really hard really quick, it ain't that bad
i cannot forget remembering what he said later and pinching myself between my brows with
dirty uncut nails, and i remember thinking hes right, it doesn't hurt, it ain't that bad
it's crazy how some things just never leave you

it's never left me when my friend put on the headset and yowled like a feral cat when the chip
poked through his third eye, and how when he took off the headset tears fell from his first and second
eyes, though he said he wasn't crying
its never left up to me to not remember
to not remember is a sin
i cant recall why

i can recall that i forgot about the apparatus and went on with my childhood
i recall the next time i played with my friend from across the street and he told me how cool it
was the second time you put on the apparatus, how you got to hear your own sleepy-dreamytime
thoughts played back at you inside your head as if you were in someone elses head about to fall asleep
i recollect thats what he said, that it felt like he wasnt in his own head anymore, that he was
inside his head looking at his head from outside, that the idea of a head meant nothing to him when he
wore the apparatus, it was pretty fuckin cool but he didnt remember most of it
he didnt remember, but i do

i do remember when i crossed the street without my friend from across the street and went to
my new friends house
i do recall the way it felt when i walked across the backyard and descended the steps down the
alleyway enclave to the basement bedroom, and how it felt when i knocked on a door so sunken in the
earth, a door that stood on the precipice of a subterranean purgatory of the subconscious
i do recollect the door opened and i was granted entry, and as i went inside the basement
bedroom my new friend jumped and bobbed around me all excited-like, telling me two or three times
that his parents werent home, which was weird
i do think of when he told me i couldnt just like rush into it, i had to get the implant inside my
head first, and then i had to go home and go to sleep and come back and then
i do call to mind from time to time when i cut him off and told him to just give it to me, i know
what im doing, ill put it on myself
and i also do remember that nonplussed look settling on his face as he pointed toward a
cardboard box sitting off by itself, the word TOYS scrawled on its side in block capital letters, its flaps
open like the petals of a flower awakening to bloom
these are the things ill never forget
 ill never forget reaching inside the box and picking up the apparatus with both hands and damn
was it heavy, like lifting two bowling balls fused into one
i will never forget thinking i shouldntve acted like a know-it-all, because now i couldnt ask for
help putting it on and getting it started without looking like some kind of jerkwad
it is tough to forget all the glowing lights and buttons of color emanating from the interior of the
headset and how different it looked inside than outside, what with its helmet padding and bisecting
visor, like something Boba Fett might wear in the shower
i cannot forget how i willingly swallowed my head within the bowels of the apparatus
would you not remember such things as this?

would you not remember the startup screen?

its tough not to remember that, what with the translucent layers of texturing devoid of color
which acted as window dressing for the suggestion of 3D space
would your memory be devoid of color as well?
it would take a deliberate, concerted effort to not recall the block capital letters that appeared
from the ther of nospace and nocolor to form sentences in the middle of the screen
would you tell yourself that block capital letters are simply not colleagues of nostalgia?
and would your heart not ache years later decades later when you joined a gym on a month-to-
month plan with no down payment and you changed your clothes in the locker room amongst naked
and sweaty creatures whose malodorous disposition comingled with the spicy residue of spray-on hair
product particles lingering in space to create a singular, overpowering stench that brought you to your
knees?
for you see, thats exactly what the inside of the apparatus smelled like
you dont forget stuff like this

you dont forget hearing your new friends voice echo from outside the headset like it was
bouncing off the walls of a canyon
no you dont, especially not when he said cmon man take it off theres somethin wrong oh crap
its too late you cant take it off whys it loading up its makin loading-up noises its loading up your chip
but you aint got no chip got no chip got no you aint got nochip gotnochip gotnochinogotno
gotnogotnobut by then it didnt matter because the apparatus was bleeping and blooping and gears
were turning and motors were whirring and the startup screen became a loading screen with ellipses
with dots disappearing and reappearing past the block capital letters that formed the words
EXTRACTING PROGRAM
you are loath to forget those disappearing and reappearing dots
you think you remember hearing your new friend say one last thing from outside the headset,
but youre actually remembering when he said how you aint got no chip gotnochipgotnochip and how it
reverberated like a thought loop of manic proportions
but by then it still didnt matter what you forgot or remembered

but you still remember the disappearing and reappearing dots and how they disappeared one
last time along with the block capital letters and the only thing left on the screen was window dressing
whose texturing was translucent and devoid of color yet somehow layered in the suggestion of 3D space
(but decades later, as you still remember, you wonder if the developers of the apparatus might
not have added a screensaver option, or if not something anachronistic at least a static background
image to liven things up a bit, some placeholder image dwelling in the public domain like a river or a
mountain range or a beach or a sunset over the Mojave, but you also remember twas a different time
with a different collective memory)
 but you still wont soon forget that screen, that blank purgatorial atmosphere whose polygonal
space lacked definition because it lacked color, and those disappearing and reappearing dots dont seem
like such bad company now, those disappearing and reappearing dots whose promise to keep repeating
themselves was a virtue only by virtue of being a promise
but you still think you will always recall the inherent loneliness of how you stood in this void and
wished for a loading screen, or even a startup screen, but the Art of Recollection is reliant on facts and
factoids whose intellectual leanings are responsible for filling in the many many holes left behind by its
application

the thing is, by then it didnt matter what you forgotnochip gotnochip or remembered
because by then things started to happen, things you almost cant remember because they
happened on a timeless wave that coasted between your ears like the unconscious chatter of a radio DJ
as he talked on the air about his

mommy and daddy sit on the couch with a space between them one cushion one space one buttspace
theres a space for my cousin for my uncle my uncle roy dads brother my brother is stillborn almost had
a brother but he was miscarried not stillborn the space on the couch between mom and dad is my
brother one year two months younger than me they always leave a space on the couch they sit us down
on the gymnasium floor most of us some of us sit cross-legged like the indians sit when they have their
powwows smokin their peace pipes the way they sit is the way we sit the indians the native indian
americans with their powwows we sit in tipis they give each of us a three-ring binder inside the tipis we
sit cross-legged like native indians on the tipi gymnasium floor the space next to me is empty because
mommy and daddy always sit on the couch with a cushion between them for my brother and they pass
out three-ring binders with only one exactly one piece of notebook paper pressed inside the binder but
theres a little note written on the bottom of the binder that says we can fill in the rest of the paper if
you want and everyone is laughing like adults laugh at kids who say the darndest things because the
note is so cute the note is like a comedy skit i dreamed up a long time ago where two british guys sit
across from each other at a dining room table and theres a baking pan on the tabletop with two
brownies sitting inside the pan and one british guy admonishes the other by saying I cant believe you
would do this to me, after all Ive done for you! I mean look, I even baked you a batch of a couple of
brownies! and the studio audience kind of titters a little bit but then they laugh their butts off when the
one british guy who yells at the other one picks up one of the two brownies out of the pan and starts
eating it himself and the studio audience howls with laughter and applause because they think its
funnier than the comedy skit about the three-ring binder with one piece of paper inside and a promise to
fill up the binder with more paper but only if you want and she tells me to fill up the binder if you want
because she is old and the binder fills up with our life together our long long life together we sit on the
couch together with a space a cushion between us the binder sits on the cushion between us with one
piece of paper inside but our lives can get filled up with more paper if you want but i dont

remember taking the apparatus off my head, but i must have taken it off because
i remember my new therapist holding the headset in her hands, staring at me and asking me
what i remember
i remember i told her its hard to remember such a visceral experience, that it made me feel like
a kid again playing games with my friends across the street
i remember the therapist asked me what kind of games we played and i couldnt remember, its
hard to remember things like that
i remember i told her it felt like i was asleep, or just about to fall asleep, and she told me the
auto-hypnosis function on the apparatus had that effect for some people, like theyre about to dream
but never quite get there, instead they just hear the windy echo of their subconscious translating into
weird-ass thoughts and images
i remember my therapist asked me if i felt better, if using the apparatus helped me feel better at
all, and i told her i might feel better if i could remember what happened
i remember she told me that memory is fleeting and the future more so, and that if i tried to
remember the apparatus and what it taught me, i would never remember

its hard to remember not to remember

i need to remember this