In the chapter "Tonight We Improvise" Benji comments on the unreliability of memory. In particular, Benji walks through his old house with Melanie while reminiscing about his time there. Benji says, WLNG made Benji reminisce about a particular memory where everyone in his family was happy and together. Elena was home, Benji and Reggie were still a unit, his mother seemed young, his father was barbecuing, and barbecue was still the best thing in the world. Everything was perfect except the fact that the memory might have been fabricated and never have existed in the first place. Something about this chapter reminded me of Housekeeping (possibly it was Benji's musings about the unreliability of memory or it might have been Benji's experience revisiting a house that's no longer his).
I was amazed at how Benji seemed to remember little details from his home and the stories behind them from the creaks the house made to the horse shoe crab nailed on the wall. I was especially amazed since I've never moved but I don't think I could describe the house I lived in all my life the same way Benji did. It's not that I don't have any childhood memories associated with my home like Benji, it's because those memories aren't on the forefront of my mind. I think part of the reason I don't view my own home with the same mindset as Benji is because I still live there. For me, my home is an object that exists firmly in the present and not the past. Benji also didn't quite described the beach house he currently lives in quite the same detail as his childhood home even though I'm pretty sure he also has memories associated with that house.
Benji's reminisces on his childhood home reminded me of Ruth's thoughts on memory and loss. I remember Ruth commenting on how her memory of her mom was shaped by the fact that her mom left her. Ruth muses on how, "Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it, " (194). Memory and loss are entangled and consequently, once you've lost something your memories of that thing become more potent. Ruth mentions how because her mother left her, Ruth's memory of her mother became transfigured. Ruth vividly remembers her mother buying Lucille and her ice cream and how quiet and calm her mother seemed. However Ruth says, "if she had simply brought us home again to the high frame apartment building with the scaffolding of stairs, I would not remember her that way," (197). If Ruth's mother had stayed she would have seemed permanent and thus have seemed like a different person in Ruth's memory. Similarly, because Benji's stay in his old house was temporary, his experiences at that house are transfigured. For Benji now, that house symbolizes his childhood when his family was still together. It's because Benji's time at Sag Harbor is temporary, that Ben remembers Sag Harbor so well and can describe the effects of that time on him.
I feel like it would be wrong to write about Housekeeping, without addressing the matter of houses, especially since this chapter talks about a house that Benji did not keep. Houses are also symbols of permanence. However moving to a new home disrupts that illusion of permanence. Therefore, when Benji sees his own home, he's reminded of time's passage. This time Elena, Reggie, and his parents aren't in the house with him. Instead, someone new lives there and Benji is sneaking in with Melanie. Even if the house is physically the same, Benji has changed. This effect heightens Benji's feelings of nostalgia.
I've experienced something similar to Benji recalling memories of his old house every time I go back to Tokyo, to our small apartment that I spent a part of my early childhood growing up in. I'm filled with rosy retrospect about every person I met there and my last day which I can remember perfectly (or is it really perfect as our minds often cling onto the best parts of a certain situation of the past?). Anyway, I love that line you pulled from Housekeeping -- such a nice touch to accompany your point. Memory really is the sense of loss, and that's hit hard this week as I leave this precious home that we call Uni. So much rosy retrospect about this school happens your senior year, get ready.
ReplyDeleteGood post! I think we make a point of solidifying our memories of something once we realize its impermanence. Like, if highschool were going to be a mainstay for the rest of our lives, we wouldn't really care about making memories in it, but it isn't and so we put so much pressure on ourselves to experience something so fun and memorable we'll remember it long past graduation. This desire to remember transient events fondly probably warps our remembrance of how we actually felt.
ReplyDeleteI love how you connected Housekeeping and Sag Harbour! I agree that memories are a fickle thing and shaped by loss - sometimes I only remember things happening my life after they become relevant again, but then I'm not even quite sure at that point if they're real or not. I've never moved (or rather, I was young enough that I don't remember living in the houses I lived in before the one I'm in now), but I've lived two semesters abroad in different apartments, and I don't think I had nearly as strong a connection or noticed as many details with them than Benji did with his Sag Harbour house. Perhaps its because I knew they were impermanent all along, and Benji didn't? Maybe when I eventually move out of the house I live in now, I'll understand Benji in this chapter better. After all, even thinking about moving out from my house and not having the room I have now is very strange and a concept that seems almost impossible to me, because I'm so used to living where I do and I hadn't realized the impermanence of it until this year.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny, the way the mind works. I suspect that you would remember all kinds of things about the house you've lived in all this time that you don't even know you know. I haven't been inside the house I grew up in in more than 20 years, and from the looks of it, the new owners have pretty much destroyed everything that was cool and distinctive about it. BUT, if you set me down at the kitchen table (the way it used to be), I'm confident I'd be able to tell who was coming in and out of what room based on the floor squeaks; I'd know who was on the stairs and whether they'd turned at the landing yet; I'd be able to tell the sound of our car (a rattly diesel VW) pulling into the driveway, and how that sounds different from a car just going down the street. I can even remember, now, the bump-bump bump-bump sounds that cars would make, as they passed by over the cracks in the pavement. These are the kinds of things you recognize without knowing you know them.
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