The Infinite Monkey Theorem and My Shit Can Memory

To Whom It May Concern-

I’ve been gone. I’m sorry. I’d tell you where I’ve been, if I knew.

I’d like nothing more than to know where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’d like to pull my brain out through my ear, pop it in the DVD player, sit on the couch with you, a vodka-redbull and a bowl of popcorn and see what happened; see the things my brain is busy blocking out. Or maybe it’s the vodka that blocks it all out. There is no way of knowing.
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. The movie in my head that we’re watching has been edited by a monkey, but not that Shakespeare monkey. I have a shit-tossing, public masturbating, screaming howler monkey. He’s collected random outtakes found on a barroom floors across the city. Blasts of dialogue. Seconds of music. Bits of light. Sound and vision run sideways, backwards, not at all, skipping, skipping, skipping. Some things look familiar. A flash of a foot, cut to a hand holding a glass of vodka - it could be mine, there is no way of knowing. Jump to nothing, nothing, nothing, an unidentifiable horizon. Pan to darkness, nighttime, maybe the lights are just off. Maybe none of it’s real. Maybe all of it is. There is no way of knowing.
There are some things you think you know, too. Like, a roach wandered into my microwave oven once just as I was about to warm up a biscuit. I thought, "Gotcha motherfucker!", slapped the door shut, turned it on high and I listened to him snap, crackle and pop. At the end of six minutes I opened the microwave. To my horror the biscuit had turned into a rock, but that little roach shook himself off and toddled away like it was nothing more than a fricken cockroach tanning booth. Nothing I do or say is going to change the fact that you can nuke a roach long enough to cook a hamburger and the roach couldn’t care less. I thought I knew something there. I thought it was an indisputable fact. Guess not.

Remember and know are two different animals.
I know I was born. My mother remembers it.

Here’s what I know: You can’t see the bruises and burns for the welts my own body has created. From my collarbone to my pubic bone, and every inch of skin in between, I’m covered. My face has cracked open. My cheeks, my scalp, my eyelids, even the tender skin under my eyes, dried and cracked like a desert floor.

I know Police don’t take care of people like us. We take care of us. Except when we don’t, and then you’re on your own.
I am on my own. Oh yeah, I know that, too.

My friend said she consulted a dermatologist who said she'd developed an allergy to commercial soap. I never used soap on my face again. Ever. That I remember and I know for sure.
Some things I don’t remember or know at all. My first kiss. My first date. I don’t remember a lot of my life. Not the way you remember yours.
I remember photographs of events, but not the actual event.
Sometimes I think that I made the whole thing up.
All of it.

Then, fiveten years later I run into someone who was there, in that snapshot moment and they say, Yes, that’s what happened. Yes, it was exactly like that. Or they don’t say anything because maybe they blinked too sometimes. Or they look at me like I’m crazy because they remember it a whole ‘nother way completely.
There are things I know, the way I know about Columbus or the Kennedy assassination, but I don’t technically remember, because, like I said, I wasn’t actually there.

That’s how my life has been. I blink and days will disappear. Even when I knew where I was, I wasn’t really there. I left my baggage in the lobby, but I was gone, baby, gone. Checked out. I know the stories, but they happened to that other Jessica while I watched from the back side of the looking glass. I shouldn’t be held responsible, because I wasn’t actually there.
I don’t remember not one single thing from my own eyes. I remember from the eyes of the other me, the one who stepped out, stood in the shadows, sat next to me in the clubs, lounged on the couch in the corner and watched with no reaction at all. To anything. No matter what was going down. From the safety of the shadows I watched my life just happen– the good, the bad and the ugly. Even in a room by myself, I stood in a corner, watching to see what I would do next.
Word is you remember the things that are important to you. I think I remember the things that changed me, even if they didn’t seem important at the time. I can't be sure. But either way... whether I know it or remember it, whether it's important or it's not, whether it's vodka-redbull induced or infinite shit-throwing monkey proclaimed, I've got to be sure... because I doubt brains will start coming equipped with "Ti-Vo" anytime soon.
I mean, after all, what's the point of doing anything if with a blink it dissapears? My life has been pretty fucking entertaining so far. I would like to reserve the right to watch the "Re-runs" anytime I want.

Thanks.
-Jess