A memory is what is left when something happens that does not completely unhappen.
-Edward de Bono
I paid one yuan and took a bus until it wouldn't go any farther and looked up at the jagged mountains and around at the green fields and remembered the time when I had taken a tractor to the same place to visit a friend's hometown.
I walked through a sleepy village with I had never been in and chose a house with yak dung patties as wall art for my daydreams that looked exactly the same as other houses I had chosen from other villages on other days.
I stopped in front of a lady selling miniature watermelons by the roadside and insisted that we buy one from her so that we could eat it as we walked back to the bus stop and the sweetness of it flavored the sunshine and made me think of all the miniature watermelons I had purchased from past roadsides.
I went to visit a former student at her home and watched her chip frozen flecks of butter from a wad to make tea and as it frothed in my cup I remembered the first time I had wiped such buttery foam from my mouth before I had learned to blow it to the edge of my cup.
I had dinner with two former students and laughed until I became useless with chopsticks when one of them revealed a preserved edition of my first birthday party in Lhasa from his cellphone video camera and I couldn't eat any more because I was full on memories.
I found myself recalling a memory of a trip to a Tibetan hair salon in order to describe the use of hair dryers to a class of very low level students and to my surprise found that it was a collective memory that we all could share.
I walked into class and listened to a group of graduating students bemoan the results of their exams and reminded them of a time when they weren't even able to express their smallest discomfort to me.
I looked out after a snowy afternoon on the white mountains made whiter by the blueness of the sky and shivered when I remembered the time when I didn't know them and they were all strangers to me.
And sometimes I look out my dust stained window and wonder if the city I see is actually there or if the buildings and streets are only memories made solid and if the people that I know aren't really just black and white colored by my memories alone and I wonder if I'm really full or only feeling that way because of the crowd of rememberance and I realize my diet has become one of memories and I'm thankful that I'm not the only one devouring them.
