Driving Into the Landscape of Memory

It’s kind of odd, driving into the landscape of memory with another person.  Not the Freudian, nightmarish world of the subconscious, but an actual landscape that their subconscious remembers, slides back into the skin of. 
 
It went like this.  We had driven past the Savannakhet hospital, site of my parental paranoia just a few days earlier, so that I could snap a picture or two.  Then we kept going that direction, driving into the south part of the city, on a road we hadn't really been on before, full of the shop front houses that fill the rest of the city—all of which are similar yet unique from all the others.  No chains here, no repeats—except for the ubiquitous Beerlao signs, the country's one monopoly.   (Ironically, though, it's a sure sign of authentic Lao food; there are no Beerlao signs above the European cafes on tourist row in Vientiane).

 
We hung a left after a while, thinking it had to take us back to the part of the city we knew, but it put us on a road we didn't know and we came to a sign for another town, a sort of suburb really, or rather a small town immediately butted up to the big small town that is Savannakhet.  It was on this road that we saw a sign for the airport. 
 
"The airport," said Pong, a far off look in his eyes—just the way it would be in the movies were he an amnesiac waking up.  "We used to live next to the airport.  I remember playing there."  Not seeing anything else familiar, we turned around to explore the only landscape we knew, the landscape of Pong's memory.

The airport is small.  One long reception building, no extended “Gate X” wings, only a couple of runways.  No doubt one deplanes by “jet bridge,” roll out steps that are less classy and more tropical than gate exits.  Still, the road has been cleared to have a somewhat stately approach, the shops and houses pushed back far enough to feel as if this is the approach to an important place, the gateway to something.  Oh, and the “Savan Vegas” billboard, the most modern one I’ve seen in Laos, stands out obviously in bright purples and pinks just as you reach the wide turn around near the airport proper.  Maybe this is Freudian after all.
 

“I remember seeing a plane for the first time.  I thought it disappeared when it took off because I couldn’t see it anymore,” he says.
 
But there are no houses here, and it seems the memory wavers before fading.  “But there are no houses here,” Pong almost queries.
 
“Maybe it was on a different side,” I offer.
 
Later, Pong will ask his mom, “Did we live close to the airport?  I remember playing by the airport.”
 
And she will say, “Not too close,” ensuring that the memory will stay in that country of memories, without the concrete footings of place. 

***

A custard apple is perhaps the most e le (pronounced "ay lay") of fruits.  E le means soft, wilted, shlup—that mushy texture that means something has lost its form, usually because it’s been overcooked.  A custard apple, on the other hand, is e le by its very nature.  When you bite into it, the various chambers around its soft heart, give up the very watermelon-like seed that they each hold, as well as a sweet, nectary sort of sauce, not at all un-custard-like. 



Custard Apple: Before

It was custard apple season on our trip.  We were sitting on the cement outside at mae Sang’s house but underneath the overhang—the car park.  Someone, it might have been her mom, had given her a custard apple, and she had bit into and received that caramelly sweet nectar, and immediately paused: the taste needed to give birth to words.
 
“I remember this,” she said.  “I remember eating this.”

Custard Apple: During

 Custard apples, by their very natures, don’t ship.  They’re too soft; too bruisable; too transient.  They wouldn’t last in shipping, they’d come out the other side as runny mucus, no matter how quickly you cooled them, boxed them, shipped them.  Laos is the only place Sy had ever eaten a custard apple.

Custard Apple: After

“I seriously remember this taste,” she said.
 
No doubt the brain centers itself around certain foci, certain scars and seams, the trauma of violence, the familiarity of sweetness.  A veteran’s flinch at any bomb-like sound is the scar; the rush of endorphins on the back side of fresh fruit, of something purely sweet like a custard apple is the seam, the path to familiarity.