BAKERSFIELD
He sat on the edge of the bed
waiting patiently for his memory to return.
He knew he’d find it again,
like the left shoe to
his dress-up brown wing-tips
that he liked to keep polished
more than any other pair.
The shoe turned up again,
didn’t it?
Why not his memory?
He looked at his bandaged finger.
Someone said he caught
it in the toaster
trying to fish out his burnt bread.
He didn’t remember having a toaster.
Looking at a photograph of someone
whom he thought he must know,
he had to admit he didn’t.
'I am not sure I ever met that person.
I don’t think I would associate with someone who looked like that.’
Maybe he left his memory in the penny jar:
‘A penny for your thoughts’, he thought.
‘I’ve a penny, but no thoughts.
What are they worth if I can’t remember them?
Now let’s see, I’ve my nice,
polished brown wing-tip shoes on,
but where was I going?’
He sat back down on the bed
to think it over.
He looked down at this shoes and asked them:
‘Do you know where we were going?’
I like my brown wing-tips, he thought,
and don’t want to get them scuffed.
I will take them off.
Maybe they will find their way without me.
But if I don’t know where I was going,
how do they know where they were going?
He untied his shoes and turned them over
so as to keep the soles clean.
He couldn’t help noticing the precise stitching of the rubber soles.
Looking closer at the embossed lettering
He slowly pronounced the word he saw: Bakersfield.
He drew a blank; ‘Never heard of Bakersfield.
Don’t remember being in Bakersfield.’
He looked down at his shoes and asked:
‘Do you remember being in Bakersfield?’
He wondered if Bakersfield was where bakers baked in a field.
Dozens of ovens lined up puffing out smoke
and sweet smelling plumes of sugar and cinnamon.
He realized he was hungry but could not remember
when he ate last.
‘What is wrong with me?
I need to lie down and dream.
I remember my dreams all right
But nothing when I am awake.’
That seemed, to him, very odd.
Should be the other way around, he thought.
Unless, of course, he was not the dreamer
but the dream.
So, of course, then he would remember the dream
since that was his true reality,
while the man with the two brown shoes
was caught in some nexus between waking and sleeping,
and thus quite a fragmentary and forgetful figure.
Unable to decide the matter, he quickly fell asleep
and in his dream, he remembered everything
he knew he had forgotten,
Including his misplaced memory.
It was right there all along.
Right there next to his pair of black shoes,
the ones he bought before the brown ones.
Come to think of it, he remembered, he didn’t buy them at all,
He won them in a lottery, a lottery with a catchy slogan:
IF YOU WIN, YOU CAN CHANGE THE FUTURE;
IF YOU CAN CHANGE THE FUTURE, YOU CAN WIN.
Now he was confused.
Did I change the future before or after I won the shoes?
Then he remembered what he did do about the future and he smiled.
Upon waking, he looked in the mirror and saw that he was smiling,
but could not remember why.
He looked down at this nicely polished brown shoes
and thought maybe that is why I am smiling.