In Continuum.

Selective Amnesia

I had a plot in mind once.It was meant to be a little script of mine,but the idea was scrapped simply because it was a little too complicated and ambitious for me back then.Sure,if you ask me to continue that idea,it wouldnt even be a problem.But i have a problem of continuum,i dont have the stamina to finish a project i start with,which is probably the worst nightmare of any writers.A great story,a great beginning and an ending,but not what links the both of them up.Imagine a reader reading such a book,they lose interest halfway through the book,it becomes a wreck of a work.

But anyway,the story is about the protagonist,Damien.Damien had everything going for him.He had a good family,a wife and two kids.His work pays well at the office,and he loves his job.But he was having an affair then,with a woman from the office and he was finding it hard to pull himself out of it.A day after work on the road,Damien ran his car through the side barricades and plunged four feet over the cliff into the woods below.He survived the crash,but was in a serious state of coma then,drifting in and out of consciousness.

Damien wakes up,not in the hospital but in the plain white room.He was on a bed,but not the kind you find in hospitals but rather a normal bed,with plain white everything.There was a woman nearby,a woman who introduced herself as Vanessa.She called herself 'The Guide',and she explained Damien's situation to him.Because of the car crash,Damien was then taken to where he was: The Memory Room,though strictly speaking that place was too big for a room.He is about to die,and unless he reaches the end of the journey through his memories,where he has to pick five pieces of memories before he wakes,Death would catch up with him eventually,and Damien will never wake up.

So that is the premise of the plot i was working on.Go ahead and try to write a story around it,no copyright attached i promise.But anyway,that idea was rather similar to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,and bear in mind that i wrote that outline way before the movie was released.So in a way Charlie Kaufman was inspired by me,if he read it at all.Anyway,i had that similar thought the other day,about picking the memories i can keep when i wake up from my own car crash,from my own amnesia.What are they going to be?What are they going to be like?

I wonder if the technology mentioned by Lacuna Inc. in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is ever possible.And if it is,i wonder if they can improve on the technology,by not removing a whole memory but only parts of it.For example,dear old Mrs. Smith from next door just lost her cat in a collison with the wheel of a truck in front of her eyes.To remove that painful memory,selective amnesia might be administrated to her,instead of removing the memories of her cat entirely.Of course,in the process of doing so,the tecnicians would have to install a whole story of her cat's death,instead of the fate under the car.Of course,they must also make sure that the blood stain in the drive way is properly cleaned.So in that way,she'd be able to retain great memories with her cat,and not have it totally erased.Besides,though death is death,a death due to the choking of it's own hairball might be much better and pleasant than a fate under the wheels.

A dozen years into the future,and Lacuna Inc is real.Dozens of people suffering from painful memories,from dead pets to dead relationships,flocks to the clinic which specialises in spiritual and emotional treatment,desperate for the partial or complete removal of certain memories.And if i am plunged into Damien's situation,running through the rooms of my own memory,only allowed to keep five of them before Death catches up with me...which five memories of my own life am i going to keep?What are the memories i am going to leave out?Decisions,decisions,decisions...what is it going to be?For me,for you?

*

The First Memory

If i can take the whole chunk of memories related to a certain aspect of my life,then i am definitely going to take my NS memories with me.Not because it was paricularly interesting,or exciting,or in any way a kind of lifestyle i crave for.But all i know is that who i am now,the person the army helped shape and mold,is the person i've come to appreciate and like.Looking at the pictures Ahmad just uploaded into my computer from his due to the crash of my C drive as of late,reminded me of just how much naivety i had on myself back then.Through the screen of the monitor i could almost smell the stench of milk powder,emitting from that crude smile and bad hair.I hated myself,and most of all the look of myself,and thinking back at the things i did,or the ones that i never did,made me sick.

So right here,i am glad that i've left that self behind,in the dark and rightfully so.I wonder what he was thinking - what i was thinking - when i pretended that the world liked me - or at least never despised me - when i was the one who pretended that i liked myself in the first place.I hated mirrors,and i still hate them now.I see myself and i get reminded of myself in the new form and old.And it frustrates me just how ignorant and stupid that old self was,casting a dark shadow over this new self.However much i appreciate this person that i am today,i cant believe that once in my life,i was that dorky looking JC student,in that brown uniform collapsing all over myself and acted as if he didnt care about the world's opinions.

The army changed that,and it fixed him well.Oh,sorry.It didnt fix him,but rather placed him on a conveyer belt through a giant machine that takes stupidity out of a person and replaces him with the right mindset and attitude,then chucks him out at the other end.This guy that comes out from the other end - me - is different.And at least i like myself for who i am.All the outfields,all the trainings,all the discipline and all the regimental bullshit have taught me a lot of things.Things that i wouldnt have been able to learn in reality,or at least it'd have taken a long time to learn.I appreciate,and am thankful for all that it has done for me.And i guess,if i am in an coma right now,and is about to wake up,it'd comfort me to know that i am going to wake up as a person after the army treatment,and not the one before.At least i can like myself all over again from the bottom of my heart,and not pretend to do so like i was so many years ago.

The Second Memory

There is a routine my family used to take when we visit Taiwan every year.A set of people we meet,places we go and things we do.Everytime we go back,those are the things on a checklist,and we tick them off one by one until the day of our departure.Of course,that list does not physcically exists,but we all know that sometime between arrival and departure,those things had to be done.Visiting both the grand parents,eating at specific restaurants,going to Eslite,and the climax of every trip: Down to Hsein Chu to visit a family friend.

They live in the outskirts of the city,near the rural areas where the farmlands are.They are away from the busy streets in the city and the noise of the markets,but a short fifteen minutes drive is enough for them to get to the nearest shopping mall.In front of their house is a long stretch of farmland,which used to be used to plant fruit trees and rice.But they dont use it anymore,because the family business shifted from agriculture to oil.But still,that piece of land still belongs to the family,and i remember running up and down those fields with the children,building grass huts with wooden poles and straws.We even had a bed and a stone table in those houses,and those were really fun times.

A couple of times,they'd bring the family up into the mountains where their uncle lives.The uncle continued the family business of agriculture,and in the hills,he had a whole plantation of fruit trees.I remember particularly the growth of tangerines in those trees,orange circles dotted the green leaves all along the side of the hill.His small concrete house was at the foot of it,and i remember the house very well,with the gravel driveway leading up to the front door and the leaf covered sidewalk that led to the pathway up to the plantation.The first time i was there,i remember the toilet was a very primitive one,lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling by a chain.

The uncle was a nice old man,always in a torn white shirt and black shorts.But that year was a cold one,and optimal for oranges.He brought us up to the slopes with buckets and baskets,and there before my eyes was a whole slope of orange trees.I still have pictures of me on that day,in that white jacket and the brown pants.There is a picture of me from that day,on the steps of a ladder and plucking an orange off the tree for the first time,turning around towards the camera and smiling at the lenses.I mustve been about six or seven then,and i filled the buckets with oranges one by one.

The slopes were misty i remember,the road leading up to the plantation on the left,a bare slope covered with dirt and was awfully slippery somehow.I recall running through the rows of orange trees playing hide and seek with my friends,then running down the slope at full sleep until i went rolling down,though still laughing with my mouth full of sand.It started to rain once,and we plucked giant leaves big enough to cover our heads,and rushed down the hill towards the house,with one hand carrying the heavy buckets of freshly plucked tangerines...

That day on the Orange Hill,the summation of my life's innocence.I'm not saying that events leading up to the day at the Orange Hill were,in any way,less pure and innocent.All i am saying is that,in that memory i am reminded of the purity of a child,and the way i ran in between those trees without a care in the world.You know,it was as if the world was just that hill and the orange trees,and nothing else.My family was there,my friends were there,and all we had to care about was to pick oranges.Nothing else,just oranges.

I miss those days,to be honest.As much as i love the fact that i am older now,that i am more equipped to handle my problems,that i dont roll around on the ground at the toys section just because my mother refused to buy me a certain action figure,i still miss just how carefree i was back then.No school to worry about,because holiday MEANT a holiday.No relationship problems,no pressure from school,nothing.Just me and the oranges,me and the world.I was able to do whatever i wanted,to run through the drizzle under a giant leaf,or roll around in the dirt,staining my white jacket.Anything at all,outside of the concrete house and in the Orange Hill.My type of Heaven,my type of Heaven...

To be continued...(I'm still working on the other three)