A Bridge Over Time

Lately I've been having many memories from early childhood flooding into my mind. Some of them are sad and some of them are just bittersweet... very bittersweet. It's a deluge of emotion occasionally and all I can do is sit back and ponder.

One thing is for certain though... I can no longer naively ignore my inner voice. Of course the very term "inner voice" sounds so flaky to some people... But I have one. I know I do. And it is usually right.

Sometimes my inner voice, or what others might call their "gut," tells me things about myself. Other times there is a sort of knowledge, through this brand of intuition, about other people. Currently I am pondering my memories... and what they mean about my life and me in general... Some fly in the face of previous conceptions about my life... and the people in it. Others simply add to the collage of emotions that form my prevailing mood and disposition, which is a melancholic one.

Of course the trick I suppose is not to let the past trump the beauty or importance of today... But I let it anyway. It's a bit like being in one of those period rooms at an art museum... like those at the Met in New York City... They sort of capture you for a moment... if you let them. And you feel like the past is more vital than the present... or maybe that it simply has a louder, clearer voice... a voice that's impossible to silence or ignore. It must be listened to and it will speak until it is finished... a bit like an angry person who's been waiting too long for something.. and no longer will abide by normal standards of politeness. It must force it's way... or cease to exist.

So I have been listening. And listening. And listening. The funny thing is the more I listen the more I wonder how I ever functioned without these memories... because they inform me to a large degree about who I am today.

I also wonder what I don't know now... and I have to have patience with myself for not speaking it into my consciously known memory.

I think many of us have memories we forget for a time and if we remember them we wonder how we ever forgot. Photographs are helpful and so are smells for evoking the past... But there are some memories that almost seem to have a life of their own ... (at least for me) and they just leave and return as they please.