fragments of memories

i was reading this piece in harper's on memory. and the list of memory fragments in the fourth paragraph made memories start to flit into my mind. driving along I-80 in iowa in 1982 and seeing the ditches alight with fireflies - the first ones i'd ever seen. we just didn't have them in south dakota. i suppose it was too dry. 

or a memory of lying on the dark blue scratchy wool carpet in our house in town, tracing the outlines of all the weird bumps that formed the pattern, thinking about how god had a big book with everything i'd ever do written down as a plan. and trying to defy it, thinking, he wrote that i'd move my arm right now, so i'm not going to. and then thinking, no, he wrote that too! 

then a memory of lying on a bridge on a hot summer night, down in the pasture by the lake we'd rented for our horses, surfaced in my mind. it was that life-changing summer where i broke up with my california boyfriend and decided to go to the university of iowa. i can hear the sounds of the crickets and cicadas and the splash of the water flowing under the bridge, the whisper of the wind gently moving the grass, the feel of the warm air on my skin. i don't recall any thoughts that were in my head, only the sounds, smells and the physicality of it.

some memories are so clear, or at least the fragments of them are. and i feel like i don't really choose them, they're just there. 

and now i'll go back and finish that harper's piece. just wanted to capture these fragments here. i'm going to see what other memories surface in the next days and try to capture them as well. then i'll see where they take me.