everyone remembers you for something

I used to think that it would be pretty cool to run into my favorite writers and talk to them about some of my favorites pieces - Hey Bill, loved that column about the Azteca! or Murakami-san, I'm going to name my first pet after Mr. Honda, what do you think? Lovely notion, but once I started writing a few years ago I realized that this was nothing more than another daydream doomed by flawed logistics, the latest flight of fancy departing from my airport of the imagination, where it once seemed logical that I could circumvent the globe in a straight line if I had a duck boat. The problem I discovered through my own clumsy foray into TOA is that when someone comments on my writing, most of the time I initially have no idea what that reader is talking about, and by the time I've clarified my confusion the interest in further discussion has long disappeared, resting forever in that mythical beyond where sounds echo in eternal silence, having died in the same breath where they had been born. If I could barely remain on familiar terms with my relatively small archive, what gave me the right to expect that those who do this for a living would somehow have superhuman powers of recollection?

I suppose I could have saved myself an epiphany if I had paid better attention to certain telling examples from my pre-writing days. I remember one night, catching up with a friend over wings, being informed that I had once said something so memorable, so unexpectedly profound, that it had influenced his thinking throughout the years. I didn't know what he meant, so I asked, waiting in eager anticipation to bathe in the renewed light of my own lost brilliance, and perhaps learn something from the most unlikely teacher - myself. He wiped the sauce from his mouth and cleared his throat - you said "everyone spends their money on something." I basically spit out my wing. Really? What the fuck?? I felt like I'd been hit in the back of the head by a snowball. Of all the smart, moving, brilliant things that had flown from my lips - recently chewed wing notwithstanding - the one thing that had resonated with him was something I might have pulled from the shattered promise of a fortune cookie?

One could argue that I should have cut him out of my life on the spot, but had I done so I would be looking back now on the regretfully rash reflexes of an arrogant young man. The reality is that most of us barely remember anything, those including but not limited to the things we say or write, and it would be immature beyond measure to expect that others do this work for us. Perhaps the recommended way to navigate this problem is to take these moments in stride, little reminders that we aren't quite so brilliant or insightful or interesting after all, the lesson being that we can pretend to know about humility once we stop pretending we know about everything else. This may all seem a bit depressing, suggesting the possibility that this entire exercise called life is little more than a charade among goldfish, exchanging volleys of forgetfulness until we remember to die, and I can at least see the validity in such a perspective. But let me offer a different conclusion - if it's the case that one friend can distill years of conversation into what I would argue is among the most pointless things I've ever said, then it at least confirms that anything we say or write could become that one thing which changes someone's life forever. It's not quite as good as being able to choose what we are remembered for, but we can at least choose the things from which everyone else will choose, and that's good enough of a choice for me.