Journal

I'm forgetful. It baffles me how easily dates, tasks, birthdays, names, jobs, letters, things slip through my mind. As far as I can remember, I've always been this way. My forgetfulness was a perpetual headache to my mom when I was little. I lost more gloves, hates, coats, notebooks, toys, books than I care to remember.

In Never Let Me Go the main character and her friends decide that Norfolk is the place where all lost things end up. I vaguely recall writing this before, but I've always wanted to go to Norfolk to see if it's true. If it is, I have a lot of unclaimed property. Probably a lot more than I think.

I wanted to visit Norfolk when I was in Germany. Near the time I came back to the States, I went to London and then to Edinburgh with a friend, E. It turns out that Norfolk is not on the way between those two cities.

I think, but cannot recall exactly, that shortly before I flew to London I found out that a friend of mine, L, died in a car accident. I spent the whole night talking with Jei over Skype, talking, trying to make sense of it, repeating, "I can't believe it," and "Do you remember...?" over and over again. And, of course, I didn't remember much and I remember less now. The day after L died, I read in the Gazette, "A 23 year-old Iowa woman died in a car crash." Woman, I thought? L was a kid. We are all kids. It offended me because "woman" didn't seem to capture the tragedy of it or how we all felt.

 For several years, I've kept a journal. I kept one off and on during high school. The problem is, I never seem to write about what I care most about years later. Somehow, I missed the point. Looking back now, I wish that I'd written more about L, or S, or all the other friends and loved ones that are gone. I wish I'd paid more attention or had better foresight.

It's the little things that don't seem particularly important at the time that matter. Now I'm sitting here in my cramped apartment den (A's name for it), tapping away at a keyboard a listening to a playlist I call "Tropical Storm Lee," specifically to a song that I've never known what it's called -- it was an "unknown track" until I decided to name it "Never Let Me Go." It's a gloomy day, but that's okay because that's the way I like it. There's a book of Lovecraft on the table on my right, and my Pessimist's Mug on my left. I can still smell the curry from last night. Tonight I'll go out to celebrate a friend's birthday.