I'm not sure why I never heard it before, but somewhere nearby, there is a clock that chimes every hour. It's a few blocks away at the post office, perhaps? It sounds like the kind of grandfather clock I listened to while staying with relatives and former step-grandparents and other people's families, but I think this one is too loud to be standing in a dark spot in a neighbor's house. Those clocks always stand in dark spots, and when I hear this one tell me it's three o'clock in the morning, I'm sometimes tired enough to be a little confused about where I am. Yet my memories are too vague to permit the confusion to set in for long: I can't fill in anything beyond the clock and dark spot and a shag rug, so I add a Christmas morning at the house of my second stepfather's parents in Texas. His mother had a sort of beehive hairdo, and his dad wore a hat that said "Kiss My Bass," and they gave me something Strawberry Shortcake related, because they had absolutely no idea what I actually would have wanted, and why should they, I thought while I smiled and pretended to like the gift.

That was one of the only times I ever met them, so I suppose it makes sense that I can't say for sure whether or not they had a clock that sounded just like the one I now hear every day. Sometimes, I think I write just because my long-term memory is so faulty that I won't be able to write my memories at all if I wait too long. Sometimes, that doesn't bother me a bit: if I can't write the details as they happened, I choose details that could very well have happened; if I can't remember exactly what someone said to me years ago, I choose words that seem plausible. It won't do to apologize constantly for the fact that your mind is a sieve, because you can fill in the holes with putty, and you can start and end wherever you'd like, and you need not be a historian to make a true story true.

Every once in a while, it does still drive me crazy when I can't make more of the past than dark wood on '70s carpets, and maybe that's because when I hear that clock chime several times each day, I simply can't imagine that it's new, which means that I've been missing it the whole time I've lived here. I get a little disappointed with myself when I miss something like that, a feature of my sensual environment that should be obvious. It makes me feel like I haven't been paying sufficient attention to what's happening around me. But it's been quiet here, profoundly quiet, and I've spent a great deal of time in bed. I'm not entirely sure how I feel. I think the answer is fine, and I think it's quite possible that you only hear the clocks of ghosts chime when you're profoundly quiet. I've blocked a great deal out lately, and I need to stop that, because some of those things don't belong out there. But it's also true that I've let a thing or two in. And really, even if I find that the sound I didn't used to hear is coming from the post office, I'll insist on imagining a bell tower with a shag rug.