Forgotten Names

Most of the findings I have made going through my stuff have been pleasant and enheartening but some are slightly disconcerting. Like when I come across letters from people whose names I can’t even recall. Let alone imagine on what occasion I might have known them. Well, there’s been a few like that. One was a long e-mail from somebody explaining the changes in his situation for the passing year. Kind of like these impersonated Christmas cards/letters. And I realized I couldn’t care less. Because I didn’t even know who this was. Or why I was storing this information. I must have somehow ended up on this person’s address list. I mean, I hope this is not a friend I used to know. That would be lame if I couldn’t even recall the name if I tried. There are also a number of name cards that leave me totally blank. And names with address and telephone written down on paper slips. It feels a little strange: People whose lifes crossed mine at some point and whom I subsequently erased from my memory. For some I can vaguely remember a circumstance where I might have exchanged addresses with them. “Please come visit me some time!” or “You’re welcome to stay in my place, next time you come to Paris”. Hmm, wouldn’t that be funny, if you then picked up the phone and told them “Hi, I’m here. Remember me?”

There are also e-mails from this guy in a CD store downtown who used regularly to post to me. I didn’t know him at all, so I always found this a little creepy. He would address me by my first name and attach very amical terms to it. I was quite offput. I realized later that I had agreed to give my e-mail address to the store on some occasion for an e-mail list with news and offers. The store later went broke, that didn't surprise me, the way the were reacting to customers. The guy would
send me e-mails where he scolded me for not doing my job, that I shouldn’t pass phone calls to them, and when I told him he was mistaken that I shouldn’t take his remarks “like that”. Bugger. Off to the waste bin!