“Memory Soundscape” — a Memory of Memorizing

A Memory of Memorizing

        I remember a sleepless night during a two-week study trip to Taiwan. By then, I was twelve years old and it was the first time that I traveled without my parents. I was lying in the tatami room with seven other students, surrounded by their quiet snores and breath. From time to time, I heard the wind chime hanged on the balcony whispered in the early summer breeze. The sound was vague because the door to the balcony was closed, but the midnight silence, enhanced by the gentle noises produced by my companions and the fan, amplified it. It grew louder and louder until it was the only sound left in the world. The sound was no longer that of the wind chime but came from the bell of my grandpa’s bicycle. The leaves yellowing instead of greening, falling instead of growing. Wind hissing, cars rushing, the prelude of the winter playing. But the strapping back of my grandpa blocked them all, leaving the ringing the only sound in the world. Before too long I realized it was the sound of memory.