Memory is one of the strongest intoxicants. There have been occasions when I've become drunk-like when the past sweeps over me like stinging sheets of windblown rain. My memories rush over me with the velocity of heartbreak. I have, for that matter we all have all lost someone we have loved; life is all about love and the loss of love-- or more accurately the loss of people we love and the people that have loved us and the world always seems poorer for their absence. I have a problem aceding to the fairness of that; not that I have a choice.
I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down; to sprinkle a piece of paper with inked letters which bleed from my heart and not the pen I hold so fiercly. Are the words captured or imprisoned when I make them travel from mind to keyboard, or from heart to paper? Memories shift over time, very similar to ink when dampness blurs their images on paper....therein lies my purpose. When I am gone, who will tell my story? Who will see my footsteps, remember the sound of my laughter? Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as wallpaper on the kitchen wall. Every bit as stationary, flat and still and harmless. Writing memorializes a momentary line of thought as it if were final.
Sometimes the strength of certain memories nearly knock me down with their force and I can hardly stand against the brunt of it, like walking full force into gale winds. They take my breath away. I must write now, I must mark these moments of my life, in ink or more frequently hammered on keybaord before I turn into an antique and the memories fade and blur. This in the hope that my effort will be worthwhile, that future generations of my family will take a piece of me, a fragment of my life and retell it and use it to flavor their lives like spices sprinkled in good stew.
A life is full of moments, good and bad, important and boring. I have found that the most important moments never fade from your memory and that you replay them in your mind over and over like a an old 45 record. They stand proof against time. Changeless and pure, authentic in ways impossible for anybody to change, ever.
We live in a broken world and everyone suffers. Our lives fall away into history--a cliche: like sands through an hourglass-- and much of who we are and what we accomplished will die when we die. Indeed, the fleeting nature of our instantaneous lives dictates that we pass through the land as briefly as water passes over the boulders in a canyon river.
Sometimes the strength of certain memories nearly knock me down with their force and I can hardly stand against the brunt of it, like walking full force into gale winds. They take my breath away. I must write now, I must mark these moments of my life, in ink or more frequently hammered on keybaord before I turn into an antique and the memories fade and blur. This in the hope that my effort will be worthwhile, that future generations of my family will take a piece of me, a fragment of my life and retell it and use it to flavor their lives like spices sprinkled in good stew.
A life is full of moments, good and bad, important and boring. I have found that the most important moments never fade from your memory and that you replay them in your mind over and over like a an old 45 record. They stand proof against time. Changeless and pure, authentic in ways impossible for anybody to change, ever.
We live in a broken world and everyone suffers. Our lives fall away into history--a cliche: like sands through an hourglass-- and much of who we are and what we accomplished will die when we die. Indeed, the fleeting nature of our instantaneous lives dictates that we pass through the land as briefly as water passes over the boulders in a canyon river.
No comments:
Post a Comment