"Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory depicts a desolate landscape of desert and sea in which are arranged strange images of soft-boiled timepieces and incomplete forms only partially recognizable as human. I'm not sure that I understand everything the artist was trying to say about memory in that work, but I do agree with two of his points: that memory is plastic and that it is peculiar.

    One of the reasons memories change is that we change. I don't just mean physiologically, though physiology is certainly a factor. Our life span is finite; the equipment isn't meant to last forever. Still, changes in our physical capacity to process, store, and resurrect memories may be less profound than the changes in perspective we experience as we pass through life. Part of what Dali says in his painting is that memories of past events are not fixed but fluid. They can be influenced by out experiences of the present.

     Because of this uniquely human ability to reconfigure the past, to reinterpret it in the light of new experiences, remembrance is a powerful force in our lives. Memories are not musty parchment scrolls kept within an obscure cabinet on some inaccesible shelf. They are living documents, works that can be pulled down, reexamined, and edited in light of recent events.

    The way I remember my friend Martin's death has changed over time. Shortly after his funeral, I could not get past the memory of his mother's tears and his waxen fingers-how he looked lying in the open coffin. Then, the reality of death was a new experience for me. Now, I am more likely to remember the last time I saw him alive. Two weeks before his death, I happened to be in town on business, and we'd arranged to have dinner together. He didn't tell me he was sick; in fact, he never told anyone. Only afterward did his friends and family learn he had AIDS. Several months had passed since I'd seen him last, and I could tell that he wasn't well, even though he brushed aside my questions about how he was feeling. He'd lost so much weight that eyes seemed too large for his face.

    I remember that he was very serious during our last meeting together-not morose, just intent on talking about things that would have been described as "heavy" when the two of us were in college together. He talked about making drastic changes in his life, about leaving his profession and abandoning the responsibilities of a regimented, demanding job. "Think about how great it would be," he said, "to buy an old trailer and travel around the country with a carnival-selling french fries and hot dogs." At times his musings struck me as odd, even somewhat irresponsible. My profession has always been a source of self-esteem, and my work an important part of my life. I couldn't "get into"(another expression from our youth) the notion of tossing it aside. But I sat and listened. Mostly I nodded and let Martin go on. He'd manifested a strong hedonistic streak since our early college days. One of his intriguing qualities was his willingness to look for personal satisfaction, not in a cruel or careless way but as an honest and unashamed statement of his individual priorities.

    Two weeks after that evening, when the phone rang at five o'clock in the morning and his mother told me Martin was dead, I remembered our dinner conversation. He was trying to tell me he was dying, I thought. He realized that everything was coming to an end, but he just didn't know how to tell me. That was why, I reasoned, he spoke of abandoning his job.

     Lately I've been thinking that maybe I was wrong about the meaning of my last conversation with Martin. More and more I believe that what he was taling about that evening was living, not dying. Now, when I remember our dinner together, I think that he was trying to share a discovery with me, to pass along something important he'd learned from life. If we are not careful, he was telling me, the demands and obligations of our lives can crowd out our need for fulfillment. We should not think less of ourselves if our dreams and plans are different from what others expect them to be.

    I still miss Martin; there is no one else like him. He was blessed with the capacity to find happiness in events and circumstances that to others would have seemed quite ordinary. If he had a sunny day and a full pack of Newports, he was ready to take on the world. I've never known anyone else who was so easily satisfied.

    It's funny, but I can no longer visualize his face as it appeared in the casket. I remember so many things about that day: the large floppy bow on his sister's black dress, the yellow roses on the octagonal table in the foyer of the funeral home, and the stories and remembrances we shared as we sat next to the body of our friend. I know what his face looked like; I can describe it. I just can't see it. When I try to picture it now, I can only see Martin as he appeared when we were in college together, his eyes squeezed together tight and his mouth open wide in laughter."

-Excerpt from Gardening in Clay by Ronald O. Valdiserri