Landscape: Memory (16 page)

But the closer I get to it, the more carefully I inspect it, the more it makes my head spin. If all memories decay, what of them will really ever be left? What
is
it that's growing from out of the rotting material of old memories? Is every moment of the past simply done and gone forever? Why
can't
they be held intact somehow? It made me light-headed and nervous, like I'd peered in too close and the flower had engulfed me. I had nightmares of heavy lumber shifting, and walls collapsing down into ruins.

So today I read more Cicero, to try and find some solid ground. Cicero says that I'm simply suffering from a disorganized intellect. My distaste for his rigorous model is just a form of laziness. His diagnosis is reassuring. A competent doctor was just what I needed. He even prescribed a cure.

The
Ad Herennium
offers a demanding system to help train the untrained mind (like mine). It involves a regimen of memorization and the placement of "loci" and "images" on a sort of matrix formed out of a building or a plot of land, a landscape. As I understand it (with Flora's help), the student is to choose a familiar place to memorize, a house or building or landscape that is small enough to be thoroughly remembered, yet large enough to hold many distinct "loci." Loci are the separate locations
in
the place that's been memorized. For example, if I used the cabin as a matrix, our bed and Flora's bed and the door and the table and the funny stool could all be loci. To remember accurately, then, I must associate all of the "images" of the topic to be memorized with all of the loci.

"Images" are the details of whatever it is you want to memorize. To memorize "today" maybe I'd assign each hour to its own locus. The image of eight o'clock a.m. would be lumped onto our bed. Why not? And nine o'clock, say, on Flora's bed. And on and on. To recover the whole day, I simply "walk through" the cabin in my head and pick up each image as I pass its locus, missing no detail whatsoever because I've so thoroughly memorized the matrix, that is, the cabin.

It's sort of like Ruskin, but for memory.

I find the possibility attractive. If I put my mind in order, each part will take its proper place and the stuff I now let myself lose and forget would instead stay present to mind, set in its proper place where I can find it. If I follow the steps, working hard and getting them right, I'll not have to worry about everything slipping away like water and vapors. I'll not have to make excuses.

Duncan's drawn his grand plan, a twelve-foot dinghy with a flat sloping front and no point in the prow, save the decorative extension he's carving out front. The mast will stand six feet up and there'll be no jib.

The afternoon was wicked warm, no breeze blowing and the sun burning down hot as dust, making the woods smell sweet. We stayed at the pond right through from lunch to dinner, me sketching there and Duncan swimming laps in lieu of running. Also we fooled around, back among the trees, and this time I made Duncan lie down still all naked and glistening with water droplets and I knelt over him and ran my two hands slowly over his body, up across his soft brown chest and shoulders, my fingers across his lips, and down over his taut smooth tummy and along his thighs and on their insides and I took his penis all warm and bursting deep down into my mouth and more and again, making him stay lying still and working my hand up under his butt and back and I sucked and sucked so hard and lovely until he came all hot and liquid in my mouth and him in ecstasy groaning loud and long and flexing his body all strong and muscular and breathing so hard and deep and then reaching his arms way up over his head, him all stretched out and his back arched high so he was just pushed deep into my mouth and he came, like I said. He lay there all limp and dead to the world, but squeezing my hand so hard it hurt, and I just lay in the grass beside him for the longest time. And then we swam some more.

For mischief we walked along the road to town and peeked in the windows of the local bar. It was past dark by the time we came over the hill and down onto the small peninsula where Bolinas is. We had no trouble sneaking about the bushes outside and hoisting up into a strong hedge. Inside the men were just sitting around with drinks, talking. It was nothing at all.

23 JUNE 1915

Beautiful this morning, with low clouds slipping in across the water, turned orange and golden by the early light. Wispy and more like a sunset than most sunsets here. We had apple pancakes, nearly drowned in butter and syrup, and coffee that could kill a horse. I made the coffee.

Flora took the stage back to the city to get her camera. Her mother dropped a line saying okay and off she went the first chance she got. She's going to begin with landscapes and portraits, and if she likes that, Father says later on he'll help her try taking pictures of animals and birds.

I'm making pictures and she'll be taking pictures. What does that mean? Who does she take hers from? What do I make mine of? Can I take a painting? Can she make a photograph? We make up the oddest ways for saying things, or we take them up.

How am I
in
my landscape, if I'm the one looking?

I worked on Duncan's boat today. We floated boards in the bay, testing them for buoyancy. We've got one board almost a foot across and four inches thick. We had hold of it, standing waist-deep in the brisk salty water, when two great herons landed on its far end and stood poking their beaks about into air, looking back at us all crazy in their eyes like idiots, their fleshy pouches flapping in the breeze, jerking their necks around like a pair of spastics trying to yawn.

We thought we'd be smart and push them out to sea and we did, giving the board a good sturdy shove and grinning with mischief as they floated out into deeper water. Of course we'd forgotten that birds fly and after a pleasant cruise they flapped their heavy wings and drifted off across the open waters. Our best lumber lay floating out toward the middle of the lagoon until finally Duncan dunked in and swam to its rescue.

Father left this note today, folded and set like a bookmark in Cicero. "Watching ships at sea one marvels at the simplicity of their design. A boat need simply hold air. It is just a shell placed in water. Containment, separation. The boat is an indentation riding across the ocean's top. Words cross my mind, ships passing, pressing their particular indentations into my soft surface, containment, separation. What cargo do they carry, what path to take? I'm swimming toward the shore, a shell placed in water, simply holding air."

24 JUNE 1915

All our explorations, it has developed, take us, just before lunch, through town where we watch the arrival of the stage from Sausalito and see if anyone's sent us mail that day. Today, of course, Flora was aboard, burdened with boxes and bags full of fragile camera parts and bearing notes for all of us from Mother and Mr. Taqdir. Flora was effusive, as always, hugging and kissing and parceling out bundles to whoever might take them as she climbed down from the coach. We'd brought Father's little wooden cart on wheels for her things and for milk and butter from Mr. Macken.

"I simply must have a swim" was what she said first. "I'm filthy from head to toe," and then she kissed us again.

After dinner Duncan took me to a field of rye up past the canyons at the far end of the lagoon. There was fog floating in and the sun had gone down, sunk below the hills, so I imagined we were in Belgium, lost behind the lines. The rye stretched out into the mists all dull and dirty green, obscured by the luminous fog and waving ever so slightly. Sounds carried in close to our ears, coming from mysterious sources, invisible and directionless. A cow came running through the field, passing by us four feet away and disappearing into the clouds. We rustled through the tall grass slowly, going in no particular direction, listening to the cow's woeful mooing. The dusk was settling in and a boat motor chugged low and steady, within reach of our hands it seemed from the sound. But no boat could be seen, nor the water nor the flapping sail that sounded, moving across from our right to our left and disappeared into the eerie calm. We wandered, I felt, forever, until the moon came clear and the field opened up in pale silver light and we walked out, only a few dozen yards from the water, and went down the dirt road home.

25 JUNE 1915

It was gray today, morning, noon and night. Low fog at either end and thick stormy clouds all through the middle. Duncan went down to work on his boat despite the cold, all bundled in his sweater and a floppy felt hat Father gave him. I read.

Flora's spread out in the big room, camera parts arranged in neat rows, the glorious box itself sitting high upon its tripod, gazing out over its dominion. Flora spent the day reading each and every instruction through, making certain she knew the full range of problems she might encounter and their various solutions. She'll take our portraits tomorrow, if the sun comes out.

26 JUNE 1915

The sun burned through so glorious and bright. The branches of the trees steamed, letting off wisps of vapor in the early morning when the first sun washed over them, drying off the mists of the last two days. Our morning swim was a frisky frolic through dewy grass and then a wild leap off the rope swing and into the brisk clean water. We were told the intimate details of portrait-picture taking over breakfast. As Flora wanted to do Father first, Duncan and I went back to the pond for another swim.

This was the best yet, all naked and lovely among the flowers and trees by the south side of the pond. Duncan did me as I'd done to him, me lying there in his arms all stretched out as far as could be reaching back over my head to grab handfuls of grass as he pushed his warm mouth down over me and I came just bursting out my middle. I'd been unsure about his wanting to but he did, without my asking or even hinting the way you can do by how you move your body. He just took me there and then, while Flora took Father's picture.

When it was done I did a funny thing which, now that I think, perhaps I've often done. My muscles were all collapsed in sweet exhaustion. My head was resting on his ribs and I rolled my face over, like I do into my pillow sleeping. Then I began growling and humming, making sounds into his ribs, my mouth pushed up against him. It was a noise like a sleeping dog might make exhaling, a sort of humming, buzzing throaty sound. An odd song exhaled into him through the ribs and into his bones. It has a tune, but one I can never remember. Only when I'm dead-tired and spent does my body give in and let this little song emerge.

I've chosen the setting that I'll use as the matrix for my memory system. The landscape of the gullies east from the lagoon. Cicero suggests using houses or buildings but allows that one may use a familiar landscape, if one is so inclined.

I get lost in big buildings so I thought a landscape would be better. It has more places and could go on and on forever, and getting around it is easier for me. I know the way it goes. With buildings, though, I'm always being surprised. I turn a corner or go up a stair and it looks just like the last place I was.

The landscape I'm memorizing is in my favorite woods, up the east side of the lagoon. It's the same woods where Duncan and I went to find the ruins. Bourne's Gulch, and Weeks Gulch. I know them both well enough to get a good start, and I'll have three more in place by the end of summer, if I work hard. five gullies, like a hand, you see. Once that's accomplished, Cicero says, my mind will have a reliable, structured organization. The organization of the landscape brought inside my mind will then allow an organization of my memories, giving a place for each one.

Flora took my portrait in the evening light just after supper. She set up across the road from our path where the low golden sun was still shining, casting long shadows of trees south and east, but bright and full on my face and body. She had me stand holding a wooden staff like a native's spear, my hand around its shank, leaning my weight against it. First she took one and fretted about this and that, complaining that her shadow was visible toward the bottom of the frame. So she made me stand for a second one before the sun sank too low, and said she'd develop both and we could choose our favorite.

Last night I dreamed I had a boyfriend who was the King of France. We sat in a field of flowers nuzzling and necking and a biplane flew in, bouncing about importantly on its landing. A man in goggles rushed over and told my friend he had to meet presently with the Prime Minister, and I said, "Oh, yeah, that's right. You're the King of France." We necked and nuzzled more, falling back into the flowers, and he told the man in goggles the Prime Minister would have to wait.

 * * * 

26 JUNE 1915

We watched a schooner get stuck on the sandbar. I thought it was a wreck for certain, but the waves kept coming, lifting it up in dolphin kicks from prow to stern and finally it wiggled free. I got bitten on the toe by a crab, ouch.