Make a memory with me, and I’ll polish it ‘til it gleams. I collect them you know, like the rocks I collect on my solitary walks. The most vibrant and colorful I cherish like those that I keep in a crystal bowl on my bookcase; but the most beautiful, those I cherish most are tucked away like the rocks kept in a little leather pouch that I hide away and chose to share at my discretion.
Move me, surprise me; stir the waters of my deepest well, and I will never forget. For better or worse, out of love and compassion or bitterness and hate, I cannot erase what is impressed upon me; I record it all, like a fossil in a stone. The meat of it all will decay, but the impression of its bones will remain, and with time I’ll be able to see the hidden of what held it all together.
I can taste it, when a memory is in the making. In the midst of the moment, I am thinking to myself, I will remember this always; and a sort of melancholy overtakes me, because I can taste the ripeness of the moment like a yellow nectarine pulled from the tree, with a crunch that sends the juices flowing; and it’s passing, it’s slipping away; it is being made, and in its making slips away like a shadow thats lost between slants of light. But some moments are like staring into the sun, and when you close your eyes, you see it behind your lids, a fixed yellow spot suspended in the darkness—everything else is lost, the clouds, the blue of the sky, the crowns of the trees, and all that remains is that which burned brightest, that dazzled and blinded, and yet you could not look away.
I’m thinking of a smile from last November. Here was one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen, and made all the more beautiful because it was so unexpected; and I wished in that moment if only I could spend my life keeping that smile on that face. I keep that moment tucked safely next to my heart, and when I’m alone I like to draw it out from underneath. And I see that smile, I see those eyebrows drawn together in such happy sense of surprise, and I feel myself in turn awash in my own surprise at the warmth and tenderness I’d inadvertently evoked. This moment is like my own personal little sun, it keeps me warm when I grow chilly like a warm leather armchair by the fireside.
Most of humanity is a blur, a sea of faces. They come, they go. Some you meet, and you forget their name even before you’ve said goodbye. And you know you’ll never see that them again, and you don’t care if you do. And then once and awhile along someone will come, and the world never seemed so beautiful, because until that moment they hadn’t existed for you. It’s as if heaven opened up and poured down on you, because everything seems possible, everything all the more beautiful. You see the best in them, and the best in others, and the best in yourself, and its like stepping outside and smelling a fresh breeze of salty sea air, or the smell of pine on a damp winding trail after spending the day in the stale air of windowless room. And you want to be the best of yourself and give of the best of yourself, and give to the world all that is the best of what you have to offer. Because they inspire you and enrich you, and add such vibrancy to the color of your world you hadn’t known existed.
And even when the glamor fades, and you see that they are not some star fallen down from heaven, but a human being after all; just as frail, vulnerable, and full of foibles as the next person, how beautiful it is when one’s compassion is stirred. Because you can see reflected in another your own humanity, the brevity of it all, the frailty of a human life—how easily bruised and battered we can become. When I can see myself in another person, I see the steps they take that I’ve taken, or steps that they’ve took that I’m taking, and I’m roused to such a fierce sense of loyalty and solitdarity, and something in me rises up like grizzly to her hind legs when her cubs are threatened. Something primal and instinctual that curls the lip and stretches the muscles taut.
Then there is the sort of beauty that is found in the bittersweet, when one’s fantasies are dashed against the rocks, and all is shipwreck to a siren’s song. Sometimes it’s the timing, its all wrong. Too early, too late, or the stretch of window of possibility is lost, and the door is shut. Not quite ready to stretch yourself, or let something go. But the beauty of what is lost, of what could have been, how heart wrenching, the agony of it. And you recognize it was lost out of fear, out of a lack of self-confidence, out of a lack of boldness, and you could almost dash your head against the wall, the idiocy of it all is so unbearable. How much has been lost, how much opportunity in one’s life can be wasted in such a stupid manner.
And how much better a condition would the world be, if we could all learn to trust? In ourselves, and in others, and in Providence? How much better would the world be when we could recognize our own selfish actions, and choose not to act from it? But to act from a place of compassion, empathy, and love? Toward ourselves and toward one another, and to treat others as we’d treat ourselves? But first it’d require that everyone be able to love one’s self, and the world is sadly lacking in people who are able, to embrace themselves in all their darkness as well as their light. Perhaps if we could learn to truly love ourselves, we wouldn’t need to point out the shortcomings of others, for who is not without fault? Those that feel the need to focus on other’s faults do so out of fear of looking at themselves.
Here my thoughts become muddled, for one strand of thought has become entangled in another, and isn’t it just the way of things when the lead sinks in. Perspective becomes mired in a foggy bog, and its damned hard work to try to trudge out of that kind of muck. Perhaps it’s a grim note to end on, but such dismal thoughts hinder reflection, they bring my fount of happy hope and inspiration to a sputtering trickle. I forget that I’m an idealist in world populated by realists, and not everyone is blessed with the happy disposition of optimism, of wishing to see the best and brightest in everything and everyone. Nor am I always capable of keeping that kind of optimism afloat. Sometimes when the mood takes me, I’m as darkly pessimistic as I’m optimistic. That when I’m wounded the walls go up, its like the Great Wall comes between me and those whose who cause me harm. My only comfort is that brick by mortar brick, I’m learning to chip it away, I’m trying to remain hopeful and optimistic amidst the worst of the pain. That when someone hurts another person, especially someone they love, its out of their bleeding wound, and I never met a wound I didn’t wish would mend. I often find myself divided in my nature. I am both a daughter of Jove as well as Saturn’s child, and here is lies a crux in my nature.
ladyslipper26 