Remembering

The older I get, the more I remember

I have noticed lately, that I remember more and more things from my past. While I have been busy the last years on building a family, career and one or two businesses, I didn’t have much time to remember things. Everyhing felt fresh, new and interesting.

But in the past couple of months I have noticed something strange. I remember.

I remember how the face cream of my mother smelled. I rememeber the first day in school after we moved to Denmark from Switzerland. I remember my room when I was 6 years old. I remember my first Notes class 13 years ago. I remember jumping into the swimming pool with clothes on at a very early Notes conference in Arizona. I remember how my boss reacted when I quit my first Notes job. I remember the first girl friend I had (and that we went to the Barclay James Harvest concert). I remember the first kiss. I remember the “first time” (no, don’t remind me). I remember the PDP-11 in the flat I rented. I remember the “Spaghetti con Vodka” cooking experiment we did in the WG. I remember the first time I listened to Jimi Hendrix at the tender age of 10. I remember my first music teacher. I remember how it feels to be drunken and stoned at an open air concert when it rains at night and we didn’t have a tent. I remember how it was to be drunk when our teacher at high-school invited us all home and I puked into his garden (sorry Mr. Büchi). I remember the Fido BBS I ran on an Atari ST. I remember how I wrote my first editor (to be used on said BBS) in Modula-2. I remember how I designed it on the train home from Lloret-del-mar where a couple of my colleagues from university spent a week drinking, jassing (swiss card game), going to “miss wet t-shirt” contests. I remember my first real program (a 8051 assembler, simulator and debugger written in Turbo Pascal). I remember how that rally driver drove me to the train station after a day with a client. I remember catching the plane from Göteborg to Copenhagen, when we left the clients office across town 30 minutes before departure. I remember how the swiss alps look from a plane from Zurich to Geneva when the sun goes up. I remember Florence and the french girl and the scottish guy that worked for DEC in Geneva and Paris. I remember how cold it was new years eve in New York, when I was alone after I had broken up with my girlfriend a couple of weeks earlier. I remember the perfect day when the plane from New York to Florida took of and made it’s way around Manhattan. I remember the PolarBar and the 25 year old MacAllan at ColoradOS/2. I remember the anatomically correct sheep that Wayne Kovsky got from the Aidon at the last session of the conference. I remember the companys house in San Mateo and how it was to stay there completely alone. I remember how Stu took me out in his Mazda MX-5 over the San Andreas fault down to the pacific and how the pumpkin pie tasted. I remember sitting in the garage of Mark Brassfield, listening to music from his high-end audio system for 5 hours straight. I remember how I couldn’t cry at my half-sisteres funderal, because I already had wept for her, when I learnt that she had cancer 2 years earlier. I remember whom we had for dinner, when my mother called and told me. I remember how Christines friends and I helped her through her depression, staying with her and watched over her every single day for months. I rememeber how the spices of the indian food smelled at the “Christine is well again” celebration dinner when I couldn’t eat anything because I was fasting.

It seems to me, that I have started to define myself not only through what I’m doing in my life now but also through what I have done and experienced in the past.

I’m afraid you will read more of my memories in the future