Monuments

It's funny what we build monuments to. Steven and I trekked across the south last week, from San Diego to Memphis (Travels with Charlie, only Steven's not a poodle), and we ended up in New Mexico, passing White Sands missile testing range and the site of the Trinity testing. There was a historical marker and, apparently, a monument. Roswell, NM, is full of monuments... to aliens. Naturally I took pictures.

But it is funny what we build monuments to. Painted rocks get their own monuments, battles get monuments, roads get monuments. Blogs are people's personal monuments (I speak with full understanding of this irony). Everything in people clamors, Remember me.

Me, I'm a bit iconoclastic (also ironic, because artist) and morbid, and I look at these things and wonder: what will we do when the things we have striven to remember pass away? Grass withers, flowers fade, stone crumbles, glass shatters, metal rusts. The world is decaying--what is worth remembering?

A lot of this is due to rather recent faults in my memory. These are not blank spaces but areas of mental laziness. I am astounded that, under the correct conditions, I can remember entire songs I haven't heard in ten or twelve years, but I cannot for the life of me remember day-to-day Bible insights, loved ones' birthdays (save for my immediate family and one or two very dear friends), basic cooking steps.

I need more mental monuments. What will hold me up when the other foundations crumble?