I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

A colleague entered as I was trying to write the episode you're listening to.

She announced this has been sitting in my office for a month.

But ceremoniously, she lay by trench coat pinched between her fingers like an old dishcloth

on the rear of a nearby chair by a bookshelf.

Ah, there it is, I said to her turning back.

I have a horrible habit lately of leaving my personal items behind me in rooms, restaurants

and store counters where I'm often caught back by a cashier.

The other day, I walked away from my phone at a grocery store checkout line.

I want to believe I am materially shedding myself of the physical plane and achieving

some transcendence of spirit, at least that's what I've been telling my family.

Yet, I am looked on with pity as I run around the house asking if anyone has seen my glasses,

my running shoes, my office keys, my gloves, my truth is I do not mind misplacing items.

But friends I love and cherished landscapes are proving harder to retrieve from the forefront

of my mind.

Let me not misrepresent, I'm not suffering a crisis, I'm just suddenly aware the world

is receding and I want to hold it close as long as possible.

Today's poem, In homage to poet Robert Haas, suggests one possible way of retaining

is to live in the music of our existence, where memories, though fleeting and at our

peripheries, still carry indulgences of delight, mourning in the city by J. May Barizo.

The dilemma always is forgetting, the notion that details cancel out the affect of a moment,

beauty concealed by particularities, hidden sonatas played by Pogorelliich, for example,

...