Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Lost Memories
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
I’m told that I had a good time in Ecuador. I have no reason to doubt it. No way to dispute it.
The day started out with a sixteen-mile bus ride from Quito to Mitad del Mundo—site of the hundred-foot-tall Equator Monument. At one point during the excursion, my wife photographed me standing astride the painted yellow line demarcating the hemispheres.
Pictures also prove my presence at the planetarium, ethnographic museum, the beer, cocoa and the chocolate exhibit. Apparently, I read from placards confirming that the indigenous Quitu people—“Qui” means middle, “tu” means earth—knew about the equator starting around 2000 B.C.—long before 1736 when a French scientific expedition rediscovered it.
By the afternoon, I was back in Quito. While I was seated at my hotel window staring at the undusted windowsill, my short-term memory started working again. I knew where I was, but not how I got there.
My wife tells me that she first noticed something amiss when I repeated questions, over and over and over, as if they had never been asked. I failed to recall exhibits just minutes after visiting them. My mind was unable to hang on to myself.
For three and half hours—really forever—I lost memory. Like I was never there. Saw nothing. Tasted nothing. Smelled nothing. Said nothing. Heard nothing. Learned nothing. What I imagine pain-free dying is like if you are into that sort of thing.
To this day, I can’t tell you a single thing about the equator. I only know what my wife reports happened and what I’ve have read in books and blogs. I don’t fear losing the memory of it because I don’t have any memory of it to lose.
My doctor diagnosed my experience—better to say, my non-experience—as transient global amnesia. The premier ailment for a traveler not to get. Like sightseeing inside a black hole. What’s the point?
Memory is an essential travel tool. Memory is where I deposit menus, guidebook information, receipts, tickets, performance times—all the detritus of a journey mapped and remembered.
Travel is the way I create new memories and in the case of a day at the equator, nada. As if writing a journal that only I can’t read or painting a canvas only I can’t see, in my private photo album the equator page is missing.
Holding on to a travel memory is the most selfish thing I do. Without memory, I am blocked from enjoying the equator again or from sharing it with others. Without memory there are no good old days.
Ancient ruins and collapsed cities are history’s reminder that everything decays, that I’m not indestructible. With aging comes fading memory. Taste buds are less acute. My vision is weaker. My legs work slower.
I’m working at forgetting that I forgot. If I fail to not remember not remembering, terrified that my existence will be erased, my heart races. My day turns clumsy, awkward, halting. Dizzy and feeling frail, I rest myself.
I guess I’m fine now, but it’s hard to know what I don’t know. My latest trip has brought me to Disneyland. I’m sitting on a wood bench outside the Candy Palace on Main Street. My wife and kids are inside doing damage to our bank account.
For now, for right now, the moment is memorable.
