Mini-Memoir

Memoir writing takes more effort than fiction, at least for me. Memory, which can take the form of disparate parts, takes time to assemble and make sense of. You put the pieces together and wonder what you’ll end up with. There is no instruction manual.

I dislike the past, and yet I always find myself looking back. Doing so can manifest as an addiction. It’s like an accident, a spectacle. Sometimes it is so nightmarish you wish to look away. Other times, it is so overwhelmingly beautiful, you cannot help ruminating.

I’ve put together a series of images from my past, each of which I will narrate.

The first image is of me on my first birthday. It is a common image of a child’s birthday party. There is a cake with one candle, and I look content. I have no idea the identity of the child to the right of me.

First Birthday,

In the second picture, I am 15 years old. That’s me on the right with a high school girlfriend. I'm experiencing my first episodes of teenage rebellion, which mainly consist of spending nights in 24 hour cafes in Northwest Portland, where I grew up. I love having late night chats with strangers when I should be home in bed. I read plenty of Toni Morrison novels. Song of Solomon and Sula are two of my favorites.

In a photo booth at Newberry’s in downtown Portland. Fall of 1988.

In the third picture, I am still somewhat baby-faced and am wearing braces. I have just turned 18. I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a friend’s truck. In Oregon, lots of people have trucks. I hate trucks. I spend my afternoons reading Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits and perusing Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels. I become a real fan of Magical Realism.

18 in Portland, Oregon.

The fourth picture is taken exactly 3 years later. I am 21 and go to Paris as both a model and tourist. I’d met an agent in Chicago the previous Christmas who invited me to France. But the modeling venture was a failure. 

Paris, 1996

Barb Wire promo, 1995.

Pamela Anderson in Cannes, 1995.

I am shy, and I don’t like undressing in front of strangers. I have a difficult time adjusting to France. I am naïve, too provincial, and too puritan, and speak only a middling high school French. Adding to my overall disorientation are disquieting images of Pamela Anderson all busty, tanned and come hither in every cafe window, no doubt a nod to the French’s national treasure, Bridgette Bardot. The previous year Anderson debuted that terrible film “Barb Wire” at Cannes, and every red-blooded French male was obsessed with her.

In Paris, I stay around the Jardin du Luxembourg. I eat a lot of croissants and do not do well on “go-sees”. I should be reading A Moveable Feast instead of Paris guide books. I should be walking the aisles of Shakespeare and Company. I should be at the Louvre.

Late spring, 2025.

The fifth picture was taken several months ago in the Denver airport, in route to the US to visit relatives. They live in a small Colorado town where nothing much happens. Days later, in an effort to stave off the muggy boredom, I go through my aunt’s bookcase. Amongst her collection of books, I find two that belong to me. One book from my teenage years The Diary of Anais Nin: Volume One 1931-1934 and a 1973 paperback edition of The Catcher in the Rye that my aunt gave to me, in part because it was published the year I was born.

Each of the above pictures are unfiltered, as are my words.