Focus

The speaker reflects on forgetfulness and how it can distract us from our true responsibilities. They mention various individuals in their life, such as Uncle Dibby, Uncle Tim, and Uncle Warren, who were involved in different activities. The speaker also discusses their own interests in world affairs, including conjoined twins in Thailand and the Vietnam war. They note that their family name carries certain obligations and talk about their work with Southeast Asian refugees. Overall, the speaker emphasizes the importance of remembering and reflecting on what we tend to forget. What I found painful about forgetfulness in general was the ambiguity or equivocation directing our attention away from the conscience-calling to serve some other purpose, because the time and energy we use up delays us from what we have yet to determine must be done. Much to my surprise upon my reflection, a quiet storm was brewing by the time I left my neighborhood. A relentless and unavoidable fate resulted from the use of our names at that location. Hailing from a broken home in the Johnson yard with an injury that would require new technology, Uncle Dibby was rounding up stray cats on the avenue for implants at the lab, Uncle Tim was shooting photos at the scene of the crime, and Uncle Warren was advocating for me at the church. So the world has changed since then. And as a sailor's son and the friend of a calypso singer, my focus on the East wasn't evil. I was a child concerned about conjoined twins in Thailand and the Vietnam war, but we had already been relegated to two other countries to prove that returning home would be required of us, perhaps because in some ways my family name was attended by some forms of obligation. Religion isn't welcome to many abroad, and the design of my father's cutlass was too unstable to land on carriers in the Pacific. So I worked with Southeast Asian refugees on the salience of perspectives normally more peripheral, to reflect more carefully upon just what it is that we can't seem to remember.