memory

Memory is an odd thing.

While you are in the midst of something happening to you, you of course do not experience memory, you have only the moment. When it's done, then memories are all you have. But the sad truth is that the mind is an inexact machine, therefore whatever memories you claim to remember are most certainly not the precise truth, but only fragments of a greater whole.

What do you remember?

A voice, a dialogue, some words, laughter, her scent or his odor, colors, music or snatches of a song, maybe the wind or the rain or brilliant sunshine, lovemaking, passion, a long car ride, bacon frying in its own fat.

Memory is most true in the instant immediately following the moment, then it gently begins to alter as time passes, quiety, secretly, until all you have is a blur of half-remembered things, the illusion of a smile or the ghost of a romance long since gone.

Then memory is reduced to ideas - the idea of a conversation you once had, the friend you once knew, the food you once enjoyed, the ride you once took, the child you once had, the story you once wrote; until the final moment when all the ideas in your head become as tenous as words and as fragile as glass and you can only hope to recall the notion of the idea, because even that has gone.

a cigarette and thou

One of the best things in life is this: seeing your little baby daughter smiling in her sleep, then going to the balcony, sliding shut the glass door, and sharing a cigarette with your lovely wife, who, after almost 7 years, never ceases to amaze you. Believe me.