Ever since I was a kid, after reading Fahrenheit 451, I have had a love affair with the idea of being a book. If you've read the book you know what I mean, if you haven't let me break it down.
In the book Fahrenheit 451, firemen don't put out fires, the burn books that they find hidden in peoples houses. Books are outlawed, deemed an unsafe prohibited item. So the people of the world, carry on and live life's full of empty headed nonsense, and mindless simulation of drugs, alcohol, fast times, and bad TV. The main character, is a fireman, and over time he finds a book and comes to realize the world is a broken place. He ends up on the run when they find out he has a book, and he runs into hobos, or migrant homeless people. Now these people do not have names. They've given up their names, for the titles of the books they have memorized. So there is a man called "Moby Dick", and another fellow named "Great Expectations" and so on and so forth.
These people become the memories they hold. The memories they carry, are how they are identified. We all have memories we carry, and we are all trying to get rid of them. We are all trying to find a way to process the feelings, and emotions those memories give to us.
What if...
What if the memories we have of our trauma are not scars, but our bodies yelling and screaming that we have to share them for future generations?
What if just like in Fahrenheit 451, our memories are there to preserve vital information, for others to carry on and learn from?
My love affair with this idea has caused me to read like in someway there was a cure for a disease I had, hidden in the pages of libraries. But I think this love affair also caused me to realize that the memories I have, as painful as they are for me, could be more painful for others. So instead of like The Giver, and passing my memories on so that someone somewhere could stop the flow of pain to future generations, I kept it inside.
Yes I know I write about it, and I share it. We all know that words can influence emotion, but can they share pain in such a way as to ensure that it stops. Not only for us, but for everyone else. Can we truly share our fears, and frustrations, and nightmares to stop others from making the mistakes?
I do not know the answer to that question. But I do know this, since I was a child have chosen Old Man and the Sea as my book. When dark days come that is the book I think back on, that is the book I carry in my heart. That is the book I will be known as, and just like Santiago, I will keep fighting until the current takes me home again.
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