what i write about

my subject is in fact always memory. not things that happened to me or things i did. it's always just about memory which to me is a fascinating subject in itself, i forget why. because too often it turned out that something i remembered all my life never even happened or did happen but not how i remember it. it was a different place or time, or some other person. ah yes, i remember it well. i try my best to stay true to what i remember. i'm not a liar. although what i leave out and what i keep amounts, if not to a lie exactly, a colourization. i always thought i had a miserable childhood but i've started to realize this may not be true. why would i remember an unhappy childhood? who knows. although i suppose every moment conscious or unconscious is recorded by the mind, 95 percent or more is filtered out, otherwise there'd be too much memory and no room for present living - so the five percent or less that's left, remembered for whatever reason, is what we know about our own lives. five percent is not much to go on. i never danced. i didn't know how, i never learned. besides i was too shy with girls. i always wanted to be the guy with the girl in the centre of the ballroom – beautiful and graceful and exciting. and everyone else stopped dancing and stood in a circle clapping to the beat of the music because nothing they could do could compete with me and my girl dancing like angels to sensational music. it was the fantasy of a social misfit who saw a lot of movies. but i couldn't dance. when john burton died i attended his wake and saw linda clark, whom i hadn't seen in decades. i'd been crazy for linda thirty or more years earlier. we had a brief exciting romance and then never saw each other again till that beautiful summer afternoon in what had been john's backyard i saw her with her husband and full grown daughter. you know what i remember about you? she asked. what a great dancer you were. what? i said. me? are you crazy? no i'm not crazy, she said. don't you remember? we'd go to parties or nights at the pender auditorium we'd be dancing and everybody'd stop and stand around in a circle clapping and egging us on you were a great dancer!