Memory or loss

 Memory is like a train, it gets smaller as it disappears into the distance. All you can do is stand there on the platform of your mind, and hope to keep the memory safe in your head long enough to write down. I wish you luck, or I at least hope you're sober. Sober memory is a lot easier than drunk memory. Sober memory doesn't have the excuse of "I was drunk, and don't remember." Once sober memory starts to fade into the middle distance, you might be fucked. All this is to say that many a post has died upon the shoals of forgetfulness. John Barleycorn giveth and John Barleycorn taketh away. He provides the opening of the mind that makes a good story/blog, but he always has a tendency to make you black out before you have the chance to write it down for the sake of history.

Proust would tell us that the sense of smell is the first and main thing that triggers memory. I am not a mad Frenchmen living in an apartment with cork lined walls, I live in a different, messier world. One where the bartenders have a tendency (once they take your measure) to bring you drink after drink till you forget your full name. They can tell a professional when they see one, and they can certainly tell when that professional wants that old, familiar drunken feeling to make them forget whatever horrors have brought them to their bar in the first place. They understand you are here to pour enough whiskey on whatever problem you came in with to either set it on fire or to make it go away. They aren't here to judge, they are here to provide you with enough whiskey to make it all go away, at least for a few hours. Of course, it won't go away on its own, few problems do, but for a few, solid shit faced hours maybe you will forget it (the problem) exists. 

Of course your problems aren't as large as you think. After all, you are not Napoleon trying to solve the problem of bringing Russia to its knees, nor are you Dr. Salazar trying to navigate Portugal through the messy waters of WWII. No one will die if you fuck up the solution to your problem (at least one hopes not). Nations will not fall, and dragoons will not kick in your door to drag you off to "see the elephant" if you make the wrong decision. Whatever decision you make, and if your history is any judge, it will be the wrong one, society will not collapse because of it. If you are lucky, which is unlikely, you will wake up on the morrow without any negative results of your drunken decision. Despite being a poor, drunken mess, the gods may smile upon you and leave only your gambling arrears behind you.

Those can eventually be settled if you are lucky, after all that is why god invented cards. To give you the hope that you can at least get square. Even if you wake up hung over as fuck, and wondering how you managed to bet and lose your hat. Luck is a fickle bitch, like most of the women in your life. It chooses to show up on its schedule not yours, and if you aren't around when luck puts in an appearance, well then tough shit for you. You hope to be clinging on to the side of the mountain of despair when luck shows up to throw you a golden life line, but that is usually a long shot. But that is the joy of long shots. The longer the shot the more sweet it is when it comes in.

 That is also the issue with memory, it has its own agenda, and if you are not a part of if, well then it fucks you, and not in the happy sexy way, but in the hopelessly forgetful kind of way. Memory fades, like the colour of your security blanket after too many washes, it dulls over time. Time is a very, very tricky bitch, and it gives zero fucks about your level of sobriety. Sure John Barelycorn provides you with the inspiration to write, look at our heroes Joseph Roth, Hemingway, and Krudy. Hell, look at the writers we can't stand i.e, Faulkner, and you will see drunken geniuses. How many brilliant stories did they lose in the bottom of a pint glass? Not that any of the stories I have watched disappear in the swirls of a lovely lager in a nice, cold glass are brilliant compared to them, but they were brilliant to me. Which is all that matters. 

All of this is to say, that tonight, for the briefest of moments, I had an idea to write down, a story to tell, something to break up the day to day ennui that we feel just going about our usual business. But then, I ordered another pint, and did not have the sense to write that idea down, and like Lola Montez she left me wondering what the fuck just happened. How did I forget an idea in that short of a time? I wish I had a good answer dear reader, but I don't. Perhaps I was hearing the voice of my greatest of critics (other than me) telling me to "get over myself" and taking out their pen of disappointment to correct all the horrid crimes I have committed against the King's English. 

All I can say in my defense is fuck the King and fuck his version of English. His English is the proper type, the type you hear in the hallowed halls of Oxford with their fancy pants dictionary and their holier than thou comma.   I am a prole, and once a prole always a prole. The King's English doesn't exist down here amongst the great unwashed. We speak and write (the few of us that can write) our own version, and it isn't going to be memorialized in some large book in a dusty library.  It is just how we talk, and how we write. If you know, you know. If you don't and you want to clutch pearls in the ivory tower of proper fucking English, well then this blog isn't for you. Therefore, you can go fuck yourself. Try that for a memory.