Layered

11 February 2011 11:56 AM Categories: Quotidian existence | Writing prompts

The restaurant was zen, it was Buddhist, meat-free, a temple built to tofu and lotus root. Our table was not a table at all, but a slab of stone, rough to the touch, dark with the damp of the forest surrounding us. Artisans had caved out places for the food, the heavy sesame pudding, the slices of sweet potato. We ate a simple soup adorned by fallen leaves, brown, with all the life gone out of them.

We share the memory of that night, and the rest of the trip to Tokyo, the boys with their long razor cuts, the girls with their striped stockings, the packed subways and trains. All unfamiliar and exciting, something our lives lack now, the little taste of the unknown.

At the time, I didn’t embrace the unknown. I’m braver now, or so I choose to think. Maybe I am more comfortable with making a fool of myself. All this bravery is wasted on cleaning and cooking, with the routine sameness our lives demand. Life is relentless and we can’t escape it, so why not embrace the relentless, think of it all as a kind of race, a slow walk towards release?

Our memories pile on top of each other, they layer, like the leaf mulch on the forest floor. The leaf becomes dirt, the dirt becomes stone, our experiences become transformed with time so that we no longer recognize them. But they are there, in the world, apart from us, intermingling with other peoples’ experiences. Because they don’t die. Please tell me they don’t die, that these parts of ourselves, these little intimacies, remain, no matter whether you or I still exist.

I can’t bear the thought of it, these little deaths. I remember those moments. I remember them all. I remember who we were and see who we are now, the layers transformed.

The photo, by Writing Salon mistress Jane Underwood, was the prompt.

Tags: writing prompt, photo prompts, Round Robin

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