rumination on memory and voice

i heard a friend of mine on the radio today. we hadn't spoken in very long time, but i've held on fondly the memory of our friendship for more than a decade. she was interviewed on WABE in Atlanta about her work on NPR's Story Corps, and i listened online between classes.

she didn't sound the way i remembered, and i listened as if she was a stranger. the voice was different though i couldn't name how or why. my first inclination was to say it was like listening to the past, but it was not that. it was more like listening to the difference between the past and my memory of the way things were. i felt haunted and lost and doubtful of my mind. how far do we color outside the lines when we remember the people we knew?

class came and went, but the feeling would not leave me. i drove home and shared these things with the one i know i know the best. she is in New York and i hate phones. i worried about the fidelity of our reception. i heard the echo of knowing the limits of knowing.

what was it i heard in her voice? was my memory flawed or had it changed? did i hear age? did i hear wisdom? or was it the tyranny of geography in a country where people can't hold still? i have lived in six states in the past ten years, and at first each one felt like it might be forever... but eventually every one feels like the next.

was it all a dream, or did Brooklyn get the best of her Spartanburg?
i once walked Peachtree at midnight and sold coffee to call girls. will she find Atlanta more hospitable than i? i slept on the floor of the 17th floor and kept photo developer in the refrigerator. i married a girl from Florida on a Monday afternoon in Chattanooga. i slept during the day and did not own a camera.

perhaps it was only my hearing, but was it then or is it now? did i not listen to her in Durham? did we not compare Carolinas and speak of feminisms in the dark? this was no idle nostalgia. i sat in the floor under the hateful fluorescence of my office, listening to a woman i used to know. she answered questions i did not ask and told me things i needed to hear. it was not the words, it was the voice.

the voice was without context, the words were without content - there was nothing to tie me to the self i was. it was only her voice,
it was only sound. it was not the indulgence of nostalgia,

it was not the indulgence of nostalgia.