Wishing on amnesia.

Crowded rooms filled with dancers and family members and snap-happy dads and mothers and bouquet laden boyfriends and red lips and sweaty bangs and pulsating thigh muscles and evil eyes and knowing smiles and velvet curtains and siamese sisters and neon headbands make me want to run. Ever since I was little, crowded spaces make me uneasy. Like a colt on confident legs, I just want to run, run, run, run for the nearest exit, nearest hill, nearest ocean, nearest bed. Anywhere but here.

Today was a weird day. I have felt out of my body, out of control, unhinged, face down, slowed by a swollen ankle, flushed, half embarrassed, half elated, and deflated all in the same breath. Yesterday between shared sips of wine passed back and forth in a parking lot, Afie told me I exhale a lot. I exhale a lot? Yes. Frequently? Yes. More than most people? Yes.

I wonder what amnesia would be like.

Sometimes I just want to pack up my computer and a pencil case, a yellow legal pad or two, my camera and some film, and go. How satisfying would it be to leave my home; empty, closet doors swinging on hinges, floorboards yawning with the shifting of the building, hangers clanging in the breeze, the fridge finally free of the clutches of my uneaten leftovers, the dumpster filled to the brim with useless stuff compiled from Christmas past? And what about my begrudged cell phone? Who needs it; Lord knows I never answer. The futon? It's crap. The clothes? Replaceable. My plants? That is a bit tricky; they would be passed on to loving hands. All of these things are merely fillers in a room, in a home, so that it does not echo. They are not a part of me, not attached to the hip or heart. I am not going anywhere fast, but sometimes on nights like these logic is shelved for an hour or two and fantasy takes the wheel.

I don't even know where I would go. Anywhere, so long as I could learn people's names, nail down what makes them tick, photograph their children, hold their babies, record their secrets and most importantly, eat their food.

Twenty Oh Eight has been such a tricky year. I have felt empty brained, wild eyed and heavy booted with a shocking consistency, but deep down I can feel a spider web of growth pushing up against the insides of my ribs. Two steps forward, ten steps back. So long as I keep moving, I am growing. Maybe this is what I tell myself when I exhale so regularly. Many decisions have been made on a whim which is new for me, but I am finding footing in this new territory and learning to lap up the goodness of every moment, even if the good parts are fleeting.

In retrospect, I have never missed people as much as I have in the past twelve months. Some of the people I miss live within a twenty block radius but are out of reach, out of step, out of mind. Instead of clawing at forgiveness and repair, sometimes it is easier to stand back in a room full of people and smile a knowing red-lipped smile and wait out the storm. Stiff upper lip; this coming from a girl who cried in fourth grade because I had too much loose leaf. Still, gaining tends to run hand in hand with losing. I have found laughter through an internet signal connected to a girl in a shit-stained bed in Central America, through a telephone wire from here to Montreal, through a grandma who throws her hands up when I type the F word, through a full time brother and part time chauffeur, through a sister finally home, through an aunt in the light of the moon, through an uncle pouring good tequila, through babies babies babies, through a nineties-obsessed girl who understands me entirely, through a cousin who shares an identical appreciation for Yellow Fever as I, through a man patient enough to teach and not touch, and through a library of books not deserving of the dumpster should I ever up and leave.

On nights like these, in rooms like those, surrounded by people like that, I only want to run because I need to write.

Amnesia would blow.

Frances Madge.



Photos of giant plaid and insomnia; a lethal combination.