maybe 1988, maybe 1989
I. I don’t know how else to say it anymore except in fragments
II. I liked the way he was shaking sand out of my hair with his hands, in a sweeping motion. The tile floor bothered him, the accumulation of dirt, my posture, when I started muting commercials, slamming doors. I’d ask him to leave the room so I could finish stretching because maybe if I could touch my toes for another twenty minutes I’d stride down the hall like a goddamn saint and recross my legs, make it better. He lied about movie showtimes because it was easier than looking at me. I lied about leaving the lights on because since the day I had arrived there I knew I did not live there anymore.
III. A selling point, a moment of reassurance of clarity, of living proof, a reference point. I could write it down on a sheet of paper for you and say “Here buddy, look this up, it’s all there complete with a calendar.” I could have proved to you that I in fact did exist. That I really could remember. It was like those tapes I’d watch of myself as a baby when I was a toddler, so that I think my first memory is maybe something that it really is not. I think my first memory is of being in a crib, being held. My grandmother’s carpeting. My grandfather eating a banana in the kitchen. Being able to measure my own body into the size of a pillow cushion on the brown couch in the living room. Staring up at the ceiling and pretending I could walk backward, upside down across the room into the basement where there were no bedtimes and a party was going on. “Play Baby Daniela in the White Dress” maybe this is when it all started, some kind of narcissism of checking again, double taking myself. But I’ll agree with myself at the age of three, there was always some kind of fear in forgetting myself. “Play the one with baby Michael and the fire truck,” and then there is a proof, something to match up with a memory. Evidence.
Evidence because maybe, for a very long time now I have not been able to trust whatever narrative was provided. There have been photo albums and my collective diaries and journals, stacked in boxes and boxes in my parents garage, in a storage unit in Brooklyn, New York, left somewhere on the West Coast and here too, here like I write down on a sheet of paper. So I can reference myself. Daniela Scrima, were you fine on January 20th in 2002 because you know— that was ten years ago now? Isn’t that crazy. Well that must have been crazy. Well that must have been crazy. And then I will look and see to check on her— to check on me I guess, to see that I am still here (and there) embedded in some words of teenage strife that I have just turned seventeen, that Junior year of high school is better than Sophomore year but I do not like having second lunch. My boyfriend doesn’t have second lunch. I only say “my boyfriend”. And now, I cannot remember who I mean. An entanglement of things since puberty and for so long in writing a series of “him” a series of “that guy” when I am much younger a “boy” and three days ago during a reading about maybe my destiny and is it okay to indulge the parasitic lifestyles of others if, like, well it’s really hard to stop? And faces smiling back at me. It helps so much to smile.
IV.. I had meant to start writing again with the New Year— in here I mean, publicly but then it doesn’t go the way I plan. I plan to say something like “Lately I have been enjoying a plant based diet. I have been eating plenty of raw food, I think it makes me feel better.” But then I will want to talk about the pie I made or the donut I had or that I am not going to stop eating meat or dairy or anything at all because then when I am traveling, I always want to try whatever you are famous for. And see, even when I mean to talk like this or to tell you that I have not yet gone back to New York, I will say many other things instead.
V. All of those videos were lost anyway. I remember how they cut though from scene to scene. There she is and she can crawl. There she is she speaks Italian. There she is she speaks English too. Crawling does not last long. You are walking, you are singing. There, yeah my face, hey, exactly the same, those cheeks did you make that up? I remember you! Of course I remember you. I have been here all the time.
Slam those blocks together baby, slam them against the table and then someday when you grow up it will sound exactly the same as being in your own bones and listening to men walk out of rooms. People slamming doors.
