Fragments

An assembled story

A few days ago I was up on the ridge in blazing winter light. I think it was Blue Monday, a day I’d never heard of before and one I shall not be adding to my calendar because it’s apparently the saddest day of the year. It was indeed a blue Monday as the sky was utterly cloudless. Which meant it was also very cold. The gorse bushes and sedge were covered with rime ice. The mountain ponies looked slightly less miserable than they had done for the weeks of storms preceding this brief clear interlude. My shadow strolled beside me, at least twenty feet long, strangely immobile, hard edged against the white ground. The tracks between the bracken and gorse were rippled, as if the wind has pushed them like the surface of the sea and every trough held a shallow pool of water fringed with a border of crackled ice. My dog sniffed at them suspiciously, licked their edges and backed away.

The freeze happened while floodwater from the recent storms was draining away. The ice slumped, bright contour lines on its surface as if it had been taking notes of the terrain as it descended. Its edges were as thin as rice paper and as I watched it thinned further. I lifted a piece and balanced it on the tip of my finger. In moments it disappeared. Ice holds memories. It can tell us what was in the air when it formed. The great islands of ice at Earth’s poles hold many stories, but they’re just the fragments. Most of the stories are gone.

There are mornings when I walk on the ridge trying to remember the events of the previous day with little success. My memory was impaired when I was a boy and most of my days fade as they pass, like ice melt. Names are a real problem, I forget them easily, or mix them up. When Julia tells me about someone we know I profess that I don’t know them at all. But I remember shapes, textures, hues and tones, the sound of voices, rhythms, melodies. I remember places, their fragments, the shapes of things that combine to make a place. And I remember stories attached to places (though don’t ask me for the names), because these stories have shapes and edges.