The 1990s

You know what is my first real memory of Ashdown in 1990?

The way I remember it now and that I think I have written about it before is that I traveled back to Ashdown to visit during Memorial Day 1990. The way I remember it my official discharge from the US Navy was 14 May 1990. I left the Navy earlier than that though because I had a lot of leave time saved up and I took all my leave days so that I was still in the Navy but was on separation leave.

As for Memorial Day 1990 the interesting part is about the tie I was wearing.

I was flying a commercial flight from Greenville South Carolina into Texarkana and I was still wearing the suit and tie I had worn in to work where my employer had an office for us in the First Federal bank in downtown Greenville. I can still visualize my apartment nearby when I was there that earlier morning.

I was there in the First Federal building in my employers office and I was working on repairing a computer terminal the bank tellers used and I had leaned over and my tie got caught in the cooling fan of that computer logic unit.

The fan wasn’t strong enough to cause me any harm but it did leave a scuff mark on that burgundy paisley-pattern tie I was wearing and I remember that because I was leaving straight there for the airport.

Every time I have watched that premiere episode of the 2004 television series “Lost” and there is the chaotic scene of the crash on the beach and the one survivor gets sucked into the jet engine that is part of the wreckage I think of that day just before Memorial Day 1990 when my tie got caught in that computer cooling fan and of how the blades left a scuff mark on my necktie.

I think about this now and I just want to scream because there is something locked away in my mind that just will not surface to conscious awareness.

Very recently I started thinking my problem is some kind of security drug I was required to consume in the 1990s because of my secret federal identity. My role, from a strategic standpoint is to do what I am doing now. There are other people who also consumed the security drug but they are not necessarily people who can speak out this way, but that isn’t necessarily a fact.

I started off to write this note to my sister but then because of that very small part of my brain that is screaming at me I decided, for reasons that are very frustrating to me and my mental balance, to post it here BECAUSE DAMNIT THERE IS SOMETHING I CANNOT RECALL RIGHT NOW!!

I wrote to her recently that I feel that if I look at photos of myself during a certain timeframe, such as 1989, then my blocked memory will gradually become active again in my mind. I might not ever get back the memory in the form of what we all recognize as memory, and that is true with most everything I write about nowadays. I don’t have conventional memories of the fantastic stuff I write about in my blog. Those are just thoughts in my mind.

When I started looking at her oldest daughter’s Facebook page I started to remember a visual memory of me playing softball in the backyard of the house she and Bobby lived in at Ashdown. That must have been 1995 because I believe I was driving my white 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee at the time. When I traveled back there in 1994 I drove a rental car from Enterprise. So anyway, I was playing softball with Kayli and Caitlin and some other kids that I guess was there for Caitlin’s birthday party and I remember Kayli calling strikes when I missed hitting the ball with the bat.

I was tossing up the ball in the air and I would swing and I would miss and I remember she called 9 strikes on me that day.

So you see, I think I was actively managing my working memory. My theory has been recently, as though I gained a new perception, that my memory has some substantial gaps in it and that is because of the security drug I recently started to suspect I was required to consume in the 1990s because of my secret federal identity.

My identity was secret but we always knew there would be this day today, this time in the distant future when I would begin to publicize certain reports, such as I have been doing for several years now.

Everything is going as planned. I am gradually overcoming the effects of that brain drug and I might not ever get back my memory in the conventional sense of my secret activities in the 1990s.

9 strikes. That must have been August 1995.

So it’s the 1990s. That’s what I’m trying to think about. I am hoping that if I carefully try to recall as much of my old working memory as possible then maybe I can rewire the memories that are locked away in my brain and then gain conscious awareness of them.

I might not ever regain conscious awareness of those memories locked away by the security drug but I might gain insight into more details that I can use now, details such as what I have been describing. Mostly all I know now are dates and places and events and incidents.

A brain doctor might be able to explain why I have regained access to such details, despite having no visual record accessible to my mind associated with those details, but I cannot explain why that is happening that way, those details about dates and events.

That seems to be all I have access to right now in my mind. I know what certain calendar days mean. I suspect certain people unknown to me in my visual memory are people I care about from those invisible memories.

Possibly as a copy of a copy of many copies of the original memory I can still visualize that Friday night in 1990 in Ashdown when I was there during Memorial Day weekend. A high school class was graduating and I didn’t know any one there but my former step-sister was supposed to meet me there and she never showed up. I can still visualize sitting there in my suit and tie and the place was crowded. I talked to some people but those details are vague now.

That was Memorial Day 1990. I cannot recall how I got to the airport in Greenville that day. I guess I left my Honda Civic car parked in the short-term parking at the airport. They lost my luggage on the way back. I remember an airport worker knocking on my apartment door very late that night to deliver my lost luggage.

And then lately I have just started to feel as though I am losing all of it. Even my conventional memory. Everything seems to be fading from my mind.


- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 7:42 PM Pacific Time near Seattle Washington State USA Wednesday 17 July 2013