Most people haven’t heard of the mind palace. It is a beautiful phantasm, a glorious self-delusion. If you want to remember or to escape, it is a safe haven in which to do so. Close your eyes and concentrate, visualizing every aspect of the palace you are building. I start with a worn down door with a brass knocker embedded in a wall. Unlocking that door, I find myself on a dirt path hemmed by vibrantly green grass, humming with the fiddling of crickets, and graced by the presence of majestic elms. Faltering rays of a setting sun filter through leaves high up, and dot gold warmth onto my face. Before me is an grey mansion smiling with dim light, whose harsh lines are softened by flowering vines. I run and skip and twirl up the steps to the door which I fling open.
Inside are all those I love, including the imaginary ones, and many mysterious rooms and gardens. Each bedroom I have constructed with care, keeping in mind the personality of the inhabitant. Ben’s room is a loft with maps plastering the walls and a couple reading lamps, a fireplace, and squishy carpets. I make sure to give him lots of pillows, blankets, and stuffed animals. The Little Ones each have a room, but a door joins them because I cannot separate them in my mind. Today, I was constructing my piano cathedral when I remembered somebody I had forgotten.
What about Lizzie’s room? I felt awful for a moment, but then I began to think. I realized her room would have posters of the BFG and and her stuffed poodle Alice would be lying on the floor. The colors of the curtains would be bright like her smile, the coverlet soft as her voice. Sunlight would flood the room during daylight hours, but at night she would sneak over to my room, and we would talk about imaginary worlds and she would ask me questions until I pretended to be asleep. Then she would whisper softly in my ear, and I would feel her back against mine, and her breathing would descend into soft snores and I would float away into a dreamland only to find that she was a dream and the world was empty without her.
At that moment, something thudded. Tears came to my eyes as it struck me that Lizzie’s room was the room of a Little One, not a young lady. Her voice. She was childhood memories, shadows in my mind. Everything blended together with reality.
There are two worlds for me. No; three. The world of reality, the world of imagination, and the world of Lizzie and me. Reality is clear. We all have versions of it in our pockets, like perpetual instruction manuals. Flitting from mind to mind like a troubled bat, the world of imagination is flighty and escapes many. However, I treasure it, and owe it a lot, as without it I wouldn’t own a mind palace or hundreds of pages of stories. The world of Lizzie and me is kind of like a fairytale because sometimes I can’t tell what is real and what is dreaming. I always used to say my earliest memory was from our trip to Japan when I was two. It was cool, and the concrete was gritty under my bare feet. Dad and I were standing beside a hottub in a bamboo enclosure, around which a forest loomed. We were waving goodbye to Mom and Lizzie, who was a baby, and they were climbing higher and higher through the air above the trees in a helicopter. Now that I think of it, it seems rather silly, but it is there nonetheless, stuck securely in the disordered filing cabinet of my mind. In the same way, I grasp at every smell and every sound and every place that brings back Lizzie for a moment, because sometimes I’m really, really scared I’m forgetting her.
What if I woke up one morning, and Lizzie was gone? What would happen? I lost her once already, and it was horrible. I’ve told very few. Amnesia, I say when they ask me. Nil; nothing. I don’t remember. It’s sort of almost true because what I do remember is like my “earliest memory” : hazy, but with a ring of truth. I remember. I remember my dad’s face and him saying in that gentle voice that he thought I could handle it, that I ought to know. He said Lizzie died in the car crash. I don’t remember if he said anything about my grandparents, because I didn’t believe him. And then I did. It was horrible.
I couldn’t bear it if I lost Elizabeth again, but I guess I shouldn’t be so frightened. After all, she still lives in two out of three worlds. The only world she has left is the world of reality which everybody knows is the least important. Perhaps she will vanish from the world of my imagination as I grow up, and I know she is gone to most people, but I know she will always be fully alive in the world of Lizzie and me.
Farewell, farewell sweet memory, and yet you travel like a separate world on a path around the moon.
P.S.
