You
are ancient honey,
immutable in memory.
.
Floating on your laughter
I could touch stars.
.
The world was rose pink
with my yearning.
.
A sunrise through spectacles,
song rising on dawn,
desire enfolded in dream,
I wore innocence.
.
Your sweet kisses
colour my cheeks
in memory.
A note to us
back then:
These days are precious;
you will savour your
memories of camaraderie
at the end of the road,
from the distance of
two decades.
Warm wood fires,
and warmer friendships,
Mothers and small children
budding careers,
and many dreams
were nurtured there
at the end of the road.
World travels,
Publication,
Independence
All dreams you barely
dare to dream
come true
in time.
Still, that time
at the end of the road
with faith and friendship,
warm hearts,
is where our daring
began.
.
For Claudia (and Heather and Francine and the rest of the Woods Road gang, actual and honourary) as I remember cookie exchanges, coffee, tea, cooking lessons, painting, laughter, prayer, and bats. 🙂
In Finland,
a single candle in the window
is the Christmas light.
In graveyards,
candles illuminate gravestones
through the dark winter days:
a haunting reminder
of life lights extinguished,
better than buried plastic flowers
in the moonlit snow.
Light dances like a living soul
in windows and on graves.
Single points of light,
simple festivity,
Christmas celebration
far away.
.
.
Missing my Finnish host families and friends tonight, but remembering them with a candle in my window.
.
The rain on this sky light
makes me long for
pattering on the tin roof,
a warm wood stove,
old friends
from then.
.
.
Ah. Our lovely acreage house when the kids were little, life was simpler, and close friends were near.
Oh look! It was for sale again! http://pglistings.ca/buy/17360_Woods_Road Wow. We purchased it for $126k in 1993. I personally tiled that fireplace and hung that (very dated!) oak towel ring in the upstairs bathroom. Lots is new though- from the beige everywhere to the wood floors and the side deck (built just as we’d envisioned it). I miss the stairs at the front of the deck to the front door- it’s weird to only have the back stairs! We also planted several dozen baby pine trees that are now 20 feet tall across the front and along the drive way. I wonder where their living room furniture is? >>sigh<< Such a beautiful place. Sometimes I still dream of this house.
Your angel wings brush
across my memory and hum
with melancholy song.
The tree outside my bedroom window
was the diameter of my skinny child legs:
smooth skinned trunk,
sweet green leaves.
Now, I reach my mother arms
around rough bark,
scrape my wrists as
I stretch to touch
my finger tips together.
There’s summer sun in the scent
of poplar leaves.
I look into the window
searching for my youthful face
gazing out at the future.
“Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There’s the always pre-existing, and having no end. There’s the notion of being all powerful–because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies.
And time is, of course, all-healing. Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.
And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.”
Diana Gabaldon in Breath of Snow and Ashes
I found this quote rather profound. Memory being the Devil ascribes evil to our past. Beyond haunting, it implies danger, cruelty and manipulation. Do our memories really do that?
Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory shows up in Grace Awakening Myth. She and Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness, are working together on Ben to sculpt him just the right combination of memories to keep him optimistic. They work together to keep him whole, because he would not be able to bear contemplating the possibilities opened up by his more painful memories.
I wonder if our own memories often work the same way? If we are successful in burying the negative history, we are re-working our own memory. I suppose it must also work in reverse. We can ignore all our positive experiences and craft ourselves memories of a terrible childhood, and use that strange, inaccurate perspective to fuel our behaviour. We can view ourselves as down trodden over-comers, and use that to force ourselves to deal with current challenges.
Gabaldon’s quote is from Claire’s perspective. Claire has a lot of memories from life in the future and in the past. She has a complex web of memories that she might like to escape.
What do you think? Are your memories an inspiration to your future, or are they a challenge to overcome?
Here is a snippet of ‘something yet to be.’ I think it will end up in Grace Awakening Myth, but it will tell me for certain in its own time. The author has very little say in these matters. Characters have their own agendas. Lethe is the river of forgetfulness from which humans drink before they pass into the underworld. The personification of the river is the goddess Lethe herself. ‘She’ is Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. ‘He’ is… uh…well. Ben. Sort of.
**************
She remembers all, of course. She must. It is her talent and her obligation. It is her blessing and her curse. Everything is in balance, an essential paradox poised on the point of a pin.
He doesn’t remember everything. Whatever he sees in those longing backward glances, Mnemosyne knows the two sided blade. She has gifted him with the joy of them, but she has blessed him with Lethe’s touch as well. Of course, he has no memory of that.
He senses the tragedies though, despite the lack of memory. He feels the ephemeral pain of loss, rejection, disdain and disgust. He clings to the fear of them, to fuel his pursuit, but they threaten to overwhelm him at times. It was doing so now. She could feel the force of her presence stirring memories in him.
A faint hum stirred the air along with a cool, gentle scent. Mnemosyne reached behind her to a goblet that had materialized there. She touched his shoulder, “Here, son. Drink.”
He smiled vaguely, sipping down the draught. He nodded gratefully, and she felt the tension leave him as he gazed beyond the room. “I must go.”
She nodded. “I will do what I can from here.”
“Thank you.”
As he turned into the ether, she smiled to herself. “Thank you, Lethe,” she said to the empty room, and heard the distant melodious chuckle in response.
Paradox indeed.
Shawn L. Bird 