Consciousness

First memory

I am three years old. I am with a group of children. Neighbors. Children older than I, perhaps most or all of them. It must be the spring or summer, because I remember sunshine, green grass, tree leaves—in my youth ours is a well-canopied street, an arbor tunnel--the absence of coats.

I do not remember our activity. We are in front of my neighbor’s house, two doors down, on the green median strip of grass and trees between the lined sidewalk and the curbstone and street. The sky is a vivid blue. I see us gathered, moving like a school of fish, wavering and flashing in a loose group, in warm greenblueyellow airlight; me in parallel play: not of the unremembered play but next to it, and I don’t know but that I am already familiar, this disembodied experience of other, which at three is also only normal exclusion of age, limited understanding, naiveté.

That is it. I do not remember the event itself.

The next event occurs some short time later.

I am standing in my kitchen. It is dim against the brilliance of the windows and the yellow sheers. Cool and amber cast and my bedroom is directly behind me, into which I am retreating. On the steps beside the back door, the entire family of my neighbors, several girls and a boy, all older, and perhaps other neighborhood children, are standing, looking in the window, chanting.

Sean Sean the leprechaun went to school with nothing on

I have apparently thrown a stone and hit the youngest of the girls in the head. I have no memory of this. I believe my mother will clear them away from our steps, but she does not do so immediately.

Sean Sean the leprechaun went to school with nothing on

I do not know if she is telling me that one must ignore people making fun of you. When she does clear them, they will chant it from the neighbor’s yard, across the street. This is infinitely worse. This is a public neighborhood event. The intimacy of the window is preferable to the public spectacle. This I think now. This, I could feel then.

Sean Sean the leprechaun went to school with nothing on

Chanting is musical, rhythmic. Insistent. Beautiful ugly unison.

Sean Sean the leprechaun went to school with nothing on

I do not know, I do not remember if I have thrown a stone, or am oppressed. I do not know the outcome. I do not know my detailed feelings or reaction. I have virtually no other memories from early childhood, save two. I cannot enact memory, today. I cannot practice quietude. I practice busyness, distraction, odd mental noise, impatience with the pursuit of remembering, even dullness: the pursuit of sleep.