Memory

Memory is an old Mexican woman sweeping her yard with a broom. She has grown even smaller now, residing at that vanishing point decades after one dies, but at some times, given the right conditions— an ordinary dream, or practically anything in particular— she absolutely looms, assuming the stature she had in the neighborhood. This was the Great Valley, and we had swept in to do the grooming. We were on the move, tending what was essentially someone else's garden. Memory's yard was all that in miniature, in microcosm: rivers for irrigation, certain plants, certain trees ascertained by season. Without formal acknowledgment, she was most certainly the head of a community, American. Memory had been there forever. We settled in around her; we brought the electricity of blues and baptized gospel, ancient adaptations of icons, spices, teas, fireworks, trestles, newly acquired techniques of conflict and healing, common concepts of collective survival. . . Memory was there all the while. Her house, her shed, her skin, were all the same— weathered— and she didn't do anything, especially, except hum as she moved; Memory, in essence, was unmemorable. Yet, ask any of us who have long since left, who have all but forgotten that adulterated place paved over and parceled out by the powers that be, and what we remember, without even choosing to, is an old woman humming, sweeping, smoothing her yard: Memory.