My Lazy Hippocampus
In the morning I am brushing my hair and scraping my tongue and wondering if there is a letter for me in the mail. If there is a letter for me in the mail, that means a new existence of my name is somewhere floating around. There aren’t many of those these days, except by my own doing when signing postcards and emails. I went through a drawer in my childhood bedroom recently that was filled with letters I’d kept over the years and thought about how it is probably the largest collection of my name aggregated in one place.
I’ve had socks permanently cemented on my feet for a month because they help me feel like the bounds of my body are defined. Otherwise, things start to get a little blurry and I get homesick in the way you do when you don’t really like yourself and you feel like maybe people respected you more a few years ago. I actually think it’s good to be self-critical in this way — this isn’t a pity party. Just don’t let it get to the point where you start blaming New York for it. There’s something happening here. A fear of disintegrating or something. Or dilution. Or regression. Classic.
I’ve been forgetting lots of names lately — an ex-friend and a roommate of a good friend. Mostly people that are two degrees away from me. If I lost my memory I guess those close to me would have to tell me my name over and over again until I relearned it. They’d say, “You’re Alden.” And I’d say “Okay.” I wouldn’t really have a choice in the matter. I wonder what they would say after that.
I don’t hear my name out loud that often anymore. Sometimes at work or pronounced incorrectly at a coffee shop. When I hear my name in the wild I have a small start. Like during a pregnant pause in a group conversation or when someone uses it in a sentence when they don’t have to because it’s just the two of us sitting here looking at each other.
I have this irrational fear I’ll wake up one day and not remember my name. That’s why it’s relieving to me when I hear it said by the people I love. I can tie the word back to myself and contextualize myself in the world like a baby learning new vocabulary. And I think they will remember it on my behalf just in case there’s a tumor sandwiched between my hippocampus and skull.