My Life Anti-Memoir

This is actually my homework for a class that I am taking this semester, Memoir and Anti-Memoir. Anti-Memoir is a form of writing that stands opposite of memoir and it usually lacks cohesion and logic. This work is my homage to Lyn Heijinian’s My Life. Trust me, her work is way more confusing than mine. There is no limitation to the form of this piece except that there are five sections and each section has the number sentences that equal the number of my age (which is 19). Anyways, enjoy reading the piece.

Section 1

White, all I can think of is white. The whiteness is deafening and dazzling, shunning me away from staring at it. I am repulsed at the sound of sniffing; it is somewhat a repressive sound. The screens around me are projecting every color into black-and-white. I would sit there and try to remember that was going on in my head. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I do not. Sound is a declaration of intention. Sound of cars swooshing by declares its intention of passing through you, at a very high speed. The needles on my watch spin and spin. They seem to have a good time circling around a point, until the battery runs out. I bought some oranges. Leaves still hang to the stems. The orange is emitting its smell, a light smell of moisture that I would expect. I met a guy that I have been talking to today. He said I looked really different from what he imagined. I am curious about what I look like when words and punctuations are the only way to construct the image of me. I feel quite exposed when someone is staring at me. I would feel insecure and stare back at them. All I see is white.

Section 2

I had to close my eyes. Then I saw black. But I don’t dislike blackness. I feel like I am floating on top of it, and then sinking into it every second, surrounding me with assurance. I do not see any details of objects – those are drowned in the rendering of the same color. But I do see the contours of those objects, reminding me of what they would look like in an 80s mime. My thoughts tangled too much. I could not tell what I am supposed to think. Then I guess I will let them loose. What I am looking for is always something afar in the future tense. I exhaust, fail, rest, strive, and win something in return. Then here I go again. Each loop resembles each other with few distinctions. The sound of opening soda can tells me a blob of gas erupts out. The sound of my figurine falling to the ground screams carelessness to me. Sometime I choose to swamp myself with tasks so that I do not have space to be mournful or contrite about my life. The stereos in the coffeeshop are playing a piano song that has no climax in it, I guess it resembles the melody of my life.

Section 3

My friend said to me that he felt his life is consisted of countless stages, each stage is a struggle towards the next one. We only enjoy ephemeral bliss during the transition to next stages. I somehow sympathize with the sentiment. The smell of fried chicken strips my mind naked, defenseless against its crusty coating. I regret eating it afterwards. But I would do it all over again. I saw the molded oranges, they now have the cyan fur around the dented skin. They are organism as live as I am and they feel soft. I threw it in the trash can. I guess they will thrive in the place they end up. Sometimes I would stop what I was doing. “What I am doing this for?” Calculate, correct, and confuse. I quickly get ahold of myself and do it again. Every note in the music I am listening to is mundane – they are not building up for an expected zeal. But they do work together, creating a melody that eliminates my expectations of the music itself. Maybe I should do the same to my life – expect nothing. Maybe that is its purpose. It is weird that every time I enter my room, the scent is different. It is not any odor that I could trace, nor is it malodorous.

Section 4

My figurine snapped in the middle after my mom accidentally broke it. I do not blame her. But I just feel sad for it: the fragileness forever haunts it. There was a small blanket accompanied me till middle school. It smelled nice and helped me fall into sleep. My dad threw it out saying a grown boy would not have something like that on his bed. I am not sure I am a grown boy at the time or not. I could not help thinking where the scent in my room comes from. Probably that is the scent of my life in the room, unique but not special enough to be identified. Now that I am not in school, I try to reminisce what my life was like there. I remembered I pasted a cheap decoration picture on the wall behind my bed. My laptop has all those stains and dents on it. I rarely clean them up since they would pop out again in no time. Some of them look like my fingerprints. One of them comes from me unconsciously scratching the surface. I sit at the back of the bus; the street lights swiftly slide past me. When the car enters the suburban area, my vision degenerates. There is nothing but overwhelming darkness. Sporadic lights blink to me but are only quickly swallowed by the nihility.

Section 5

The painting was a black-and-white building standing in a background with all kinds of colorful shapes. I feel I am in another building when I was looking at the painting. Shadows of objects are interesting to me. They delineate the original item exactly, with colors removed entirely. They dance as the object moves. But you can never tell the whole story from the movement of one shadow. I am sitting on the bus going back to home. My away-from-home time made me realize the nostalgia materialized from small things. I crave for rice noodles that I often had for my breakfasts. But they are not available elsewhere. It is the time that I missed something or someone from home that made me realize the nostalgia. I wonder for people who do not feel nostalgia: do they have precious memories in their homes or those memories fade away to something insignificant? In that sense, if I moved to another city for a long time, long enough to wash away the memories I have had, would I feel nostalgic to my first home city? I guess time will reveal to me the answer. My colleague gave me a bag of nuts today. There are berries, raisins, pistachios, walnuts, and cashews all mixed up in it. I poured a mouthful and chewed till saltiness and sweetness interlaced on my tongue. Sweet, salty, and a bit bitterness. My thoughts tangled too much. I guess I will let them loose.