L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

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August 26, 2008 on 9:15 am | In General Musing, Travel |

I have bad sectors in my brain. It’s something I’ve known for a long time. Though I can foresee a day when even that knowledge will slip into a bad sector. At that point, I’ll just sit on a porch swing and eat Doritos until I die. But for the moment, I’m at that uncomfortable stage of knowingly watching my brain slip into a black hole.

I’m convinced that everything we know, see, hear or feel is held in our brains somewhere, each memory tucked cozily into its niche. But the door keys are slipping off the ring, one by one. Or by the hundreds. I really have no way of knowing for sure.

I first became aware of this phenomenon years ago, when I realized I could never retrieve the word “sublimate” on demand. Not that I needed it often, but each and every time I needed it, I’d rattle the doorknob in vain. It was only when I’d given up and moved on that it would waft out through the keyhole and chuckle smugly from the sidelines.

I developed a theory that the connection to that particular memory was broken in some way; the path to it severed by some random lesion. It was fascinating. I felt like a scientist unraveling the secrets of the brain. And it was a word that I was willing to sacrifice in the name of research.

Continuing my experiments, I managed dig under the floor of its little cell and break in, even though the door was permanently bricked up. Now I can grab it by the scruff of its gaseous little neck and drag it out, blinking in the sun, at will. Sublimate sublimate sublimate. Hahaha!

But time moves on and I’ve started to notice that more and more memories are trapped in inaccessible cells. Suddenly it’s not an interesting fluke but Frankenstein’s monster run amok. The latest evidence is pictured below: A lovely little coffee house in Madison (where I am now seated) with a name that will NOT stay in my head.

Mother Fool’s Coffee. I have a picture now. I have fixed the name in pixels. Perhaps it will be enough. But yesterday, time after time I’d look for it and find the flat, blank face of a locked door. I didn’t really need to find it, but once I noticed it was MIA, it bugged me and I couldn’t let it go. I finally had to just come back. Will these measures be enough to burn a new pathway? Stay tuned.

-=-=-

Yesterday was another lovely day in Madison. I walked about ten miles through Capitol Square and along the shore of Lake Monona. I found the local gay pickup alley and the state mosquito preserve. I retract my previous statement that Wisconsin is unrelievedly white. The pedestrians around the capitol, at least, were reassuringly diverse. It’s not what I’d call a melting pot, but hey.

I had a traditional Wisconsin lunch at a traditional Wisconsin supper club, The Old Fashioned on the square near the state capitol. I was assured that the grilled summer sausage, red onion and muenster cheese sandwich (No. 38) was about as Wisconian as you can get and several other people have confirmed it after the fact, nodding contemplatively in agreement. No doubt reliving past sandwiches. I did not order the batter-fried cheese curds or the beer cheese soup. My lunch companion had the soup. It comes garnished with popcorn crumbs. Also apparently traditional. It may be ambrosia, but it looks like someone forgot the tortilla chips for the nachos and scrounged in the sofa cushions for a bit of flotsam. “They’ll never notice…”

I’ll end this on the happy note that it pays to sit in coffee houses. I now have an invitation to go sailing tomorrow evening on Lake… um…

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