What Shall I Do with These Memories?

by Samuel Hux (November 2016)

What indeed? We humans are so time-bound: trapped in Past-Present-Future. The Future is not here yet but will be when this fraction of a second we call the Present passes into the Past. When we wonder what will be we are not reflecting on what is at this vanishing present second: we are wondering how different or similar things will be compared to what has been. Which means most of our conscious life is about the Past, the longest thing we have. To an extraordinary degree, then, My Life is my Memoriesmore>>>

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3 Responses

  1. Cousins Jeep and Tom in Ouachita Parish calling their black housekeeper "Momma" and their white biological mother "Sista", three dumb ass white kids in the back seat of a 49 Ford while stopped for a bridge repair waving at a black convict on a Florida chain gang and he pretending not to notice because there was a white women (my mom) in the front seat but as the rear window passes he nods and smiles and raises his hand slightly, a black stevedore from Duval County surnamed Cameron stops and picks up a hitchiking teenaged white boy on US301 and carries him to Palatka without a word between them except the initial name exchange and when they reach their destination the boy says "thanks" and the man says "goodbye" and ten thousand other more memories of coming of age in the deep South that have nothing to do with race or being black or white but only of being Southern.  

  2. Just as history informs a national identity so do memories inform our individual ones, and part of that identity is Voice.  I've been reading (and conversing with) Sam Hux for decades: there are no more distinctive voices than his.  As distinctive?  Hitchens, Dalrymple, Epstein: voices marked by deep reflection, a breadth of knowledge, stylistic ease, and lots and lots of spine (among other qualities), The great James Brown used to say, "kill 'em and leave."  Well, Sam Hux has killed me (us), but I sorely hope he's not gone.

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