That phrase I use in the title, “The Alchemy of Memory,” is one I’ve used before, in the first iteration of the Oort Cloud. Rikki Lee Jones talks about it too, in her song Young Blood, when she says “you never know when you’re making a memory.” Because you don’t.
I am fascinated by the sensation of feeling like you are making memories. Of an event, or a person, or a landscape, or even just a feeling. Like you can feel the grey matter of your brain forming some new structure inside your head, one that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. You don’t quite know why, or how, you don’t understand the alchemical process by which some transient event turns permanent in your mind, forever captured. It’s a black box. An experience goes in, and sometimes a memory comes out the other side, but the process that takes place inside that black box is hidden.
This month’s story, “Prince Albert in a Can,” is all about memory. The events in this story are all pretty much true, though on a more condensed timeline than they happened in real life. This was my life in Eliot Park in Minneapolis im my 20s. I really did try to quit my stupid job at a neighborhood market, and they made me manager instead. I really did have a roommate who broke into old houses, and was a thief, and had an overly young girlfriend who worked at the mall in a cheese shop (she was, to be fair, over 18). Her parents really did knock on our door and demand to know if she was there, and I really did answer the door as I was putting on my tie to go to work.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel really were on late night TV at the time, and we frequently watched them with bong and cereal bowl in hand.
As I pointed out a couple weeks ago, I wrote the story about ten years after the events of the story, which is how I think I process my life, processing events ten years after they occur (the story was eventually published in New York Press the year it was written). I’m writing this post about thirty years after I wrote the story, and the people and places of that time in my life still hold a vibrant occupancy in the folds of my brain. Writing about the story right now is a memory of a memory of a memory, circling back on itself like a red tailed hawk following the invisible flow of the airstream it rides upon.
I was a different writer then than I am now. I am tempted to edit the story, clean up the writing and maybe soften and sanitize those memories, but I will resist.
So. I give you Prince Albert in a Can. Give it a read if you are so inclined. Cover artwork by the lovely and talented Jo Seaquist.
As always, the links:
Today’s story: Prince Albert in a Can
March’s story: Fuck, Marry, Kill
February’s story: Veronica Scissors
My first novel, Life Under Water
My website: jeffmwood.com.
My Amazon page.
My erotic flash fiction series, Serious Moonlight (as J G Cain)
Peace.