Hello and welcome, I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. A podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Today, Let’s Have A Second Round.
What would you do differently the second time around?
If you had a chance to live it all again, would you change anything? Let’s say you needed to erase a memory; just one. What if that were possible? What if you accidentally found a way to erase a memory that was attached to a cell of memories? You’ve gone and done it now, the memories of a certain person are gone but your reality still calls for knowing them. You don’t know it yet, but this has become an opportunity. An opportunity to meet one of your favorite people all over again. A relationship reset, but only on one side.
Yes, I know, this has been done to death, amnesia, the amnesiac’s family goes through the motions of reintroducing the person into their life. The underlying care with which it is done, the safety net becomes a narrative of love and beauty. So, however done to death the storyline is, I don’t get tired of listening to the different ways and voices that tell it. Furthermore, how lovely to see a mind rediscovering a part of what makes our humanness worth all of the difficulties we have to face.
So, it is you, you aren’t a passive observer, like in the movies (Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, 50 First Dates, Amensiac, The Butterfly Effect, Finding Nemo), no, you are living this, you are the protagonist. Like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you decided to erase something, mind you, you wanted to erase just one thing. From one moment to the next, it is gone. You don’t even know that you did it. Unknowingly, missing the past three years of experiences with someone. By your own hand, you erased a piece of your experiences that were tied to the others, you unwillingly unraveled the threads that held together your knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration of the other. You meant to erase just one memory, the most recent. If you were truly honest, you might admit that you in fact had considered wiping the whole experience clean. It would make everything easier. A hard reset was never in question. However, here you are. You accidentally wiped your mind clean of her or him. It wouldn't be a problem if the other side of the equation weren’t also invested in those memories. And that my friends, is the heart of the story of all our hearts. A complicitous soul.
You forgot this. You don’t know of the complicity and softness behind the actions of whomever realizes you have lost them, and they you. It isn’t a tragedy. It doesn’t have to be. It is a chance for one of you to rediscover everything, all over again. To be on the other side of the magic the other is unaware of, knowing what the outcome could be, the treasures and secrets encapsulated by the chemical reaction waiting to happen. The elements are there. The question of the tree that falls in the forest, having no one to listen to it, did it make a sound? Did it actually fall or was it placed there? By giants, of course. If you forgot everything that happened to make you feel a certain way, is the feeling gone? Can it happen all over again? Would you want to? You see, the bittersweetness of the love, the deepness of the roots entangled in personality, the way we see life, the new voice in your head and endless discussions and conversations, the narration and laughter that accompanies you, the thought that wakes in the mornings… Beautiful and exhausting. The chemical elements are there. It is all in the other’s hands. Accidental or not, instigating that chemical reaction is up to just
