Today, i waited for a few friends to drop by on the week anniversary of my triple bypass. I fell asleep on my sofa and when i awakened, it was later in the afternoon. The sun was streaming through the front window and pouring across one of my old flags like it was still veterans day, and I had missed it, and my friend the sun was being kind enough to remind me not to forget. I lay frozen there to the sound of only my breathing and half opened eyes. I looked around that small corner of my life and realized how much this very view meant to me. I put all this there without knowing what I was doing. I was building memories.
There is my favorite oil painting. I never thought I'd own something so beautiful. I remember seeing it in the back corner of a small art shop in Europe. The owner almost crying when I said I wanted to buy it. My promise to ship it back to the shop owner if he ever wanted to swap it with a purple hued floral by the same artist hanging in the elderly shop owners home. The dim light shining across the brass on the old clock that's been ringing for 27years in our homes. The painted brass dials with scenes of life in Germany and the Neuschwanstein castle swinging back and forth on the weight dial. Memories of picking each of our children up once a week to open the big clock and wind the giant key to the reverberating sounds of a large mechanical clock work. Nothing sounds like that. 
Memories. That's what they are, that's what we build and try to maintain in our own special ways.
And I wondered if everyone has these non-secret / secret places. Places that without explanation would mean nothing, but with understanding could explain whole portions of ones life. I guess the photo walls in our homes growing up were part of that memory building for our parents as they lined our hallways and stairways with black and white and yellowed pictures we were all to happy to get rid of like bad sweaters. For our parents, or mothers at least, they were living murals of life and all they treasured and smiled at each day. Taking the silent 100 trips down the hall or up an down those stairs with laundry or soup, realizing that in time they pass those photos now only with the reality that those times will not return. Memories can help us remember and that's it. For our loves burn bright and fade slowly into our pasts like the embers of a good fire. No two are ever the same or comparable. Our children are each the best and most unique and special. We wish they didn't have our weaknesses and we celebrate our gifts woven into their successes. We ache when our children leave us, and our families and our loved ones and we rejoice when we can celebrate together on occasion.
You know I'm guessing that memories are gone when we are gone, and that the beauty of them is for the now and the moment and the mortal. And I'm guessing that that should make them all the more special for us to cherish.
Well in less than a blink of an eye, the printed photograph has really come and gone like a comet in the night, and entire memories of lives are now stored on a chip of a breakable throw away every 18month phone.
The scanner and fax machine and 8tracks, 9mm, Dats, cassettes, Cd's and dvd's, floppys, mega, gigga, Terra... That's the speed of where our memories are going. Will the pencil disappear soon? I'm guessing so. It seems to only take one generation of biased teaching to sway minds now. Whatever politician can invest enough money and leverage into the future of the next "pencil" will win that one.
So where is the future of memories for our children and their children's children? How do we conserve and preserve it for them till they actually care about such things as history, legacy, family?
For those without children I'm at a loss. An unexplained sadness of a fork in the road some day coming when the aloneness of being alone set's in while one watches a neighbor surrounded with grand and great grand children experiencing and giving memories to new generations. (Like your grandma licking her thumb in slow motion to wipe something off your cheek, and you know it will smell worse than your worst nightmare for 5min. and yet, you will stand and take it, and say thank you grandma, because that look in her eyes made the memory all worth it.)
Pop culture will figure that out for each generation I guess. The wild stories will always remain of the crazy uncle, the normal 99 percent of people will be generally be forgotten in a few years, and any way to make someone think more of themselves will make a buck faster than all the good ideas for "others" ever combined. Wait... unless the book that says doing for yourself is actually doing for others and it's better than if you did it for them, hasn't been written. That will sell the most.
Where are your memories stored? Go find one of those places today and be still and listen for the voices of the past that you loved and cherished. Listen for the wisdom you missed in words that seemed of no value at the time. Behind it all, if it was good, if it was noble, you will hear the words "it's love" echoed in the sights, sounds, tastes and touches of it all. And all that... is for you, for me, for right now. And like everything, it is a gift. A gift from a Father to a child. Write them down how ever you can to memory. Share them with those you love.
And anything less, anything given to you in hate and with and for a selfish destruction of others, for personal gain and your destruction...? Is not God. So today, get rid of that hard drive, unplug it, throw it away, it's your choice. These are your memories. Start a new camera today with new photos and new memories that celebrate all the goodness that you are..
Well the sun has fallen on this little corner of my living room. That setting sun has turned to a fires glow and the smell of crackling pine and dim lights and candles. And the sounds of the clock remind me that we don't get these moments back. I look and stare, and try to remember this again. And I stare in silence at the 10inch zipper on my chest and the surgeon saying see you in a few, and the waking up and the nurses, and helpers. It's like a sped up movie of it all, and my precious wife trying to do everything perfect, and the cards and notes and voicemails and photos and.... feelings of unworthiness and helplessness and pain and anger and tears and laughter and the building of .... memories.
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1 comment:
Very well said, Craigo. And I imagine that your recent flirt with mortality causes you to even see your memories with a greater vividness. This is as it should be.
Can memories be preserved? To some degree but only at 100% for the first generation of the memory. Because memories go beyond the item, the photo, the physical elements and, as you said so accurately, are tied to smells, sounds, visions, so that our unique tapestry is created. But it is always why "story-telling" has been so important throughout history, because it is the closest thing to transferring memories to others.
In contrast to the views and feeling you expressed, I see the new/old generation who has "bucket lists". I for one don't get this. Sure, I have things I want to do but I want to do them for my own reasons. So much of the "bucket list" movement again supports the increasingly narcissistic world we live in where people do things strictly to impress others. In the process, they don't experience the moment themselves because they are doing it for the wrong reason. I have said for so many years, I pity the parent who has always had to be the photographer or the videographer, because you NEVER get to experience the fullness of those moments; you can only relive them through a lense that has removed you one step from what was actually happening. That's why we need film-makers...to help impart these images to us. But in the process, they are once removed and only remember the process themselves. But they are making it for someone else to begin with, so it makes sense. But I have chosen to not live my life as a filmmaker but rather an individual person who wants to possess the experience and the moment so I can have my own memories that will live on as long as I do and maybe, in part, can be transferred in little pieces to my family and those around me.
It seems like every generation since the 1950's has become more entitled and, with it, they seek to live out their sense of entitlement in different ways. But it has created increasingly an "I/me/my" world; technology has so blurred the lines on this that there is no reversing it now, in my opinion. Sense of self has decreased in a "selfie" generation. It's all so backwards.
What will correct it for us individually, as a society, as a global community? More open-heart surgeries, more disasters, more events which rip out the false-bottom-floors so many are standing on today. Not in a dark, sadistic, or twisted sort of way, but in a way that causes more of mankind to see their own mortality, their own sense of self, their own need of others, not so they look better or get some return on it; but strictly so that humanity can once again be elevated. We cannot escape it because we are, at the end of the day, still human. We still go to bed at night with our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own sense of accomplishment or failure, BUT we lose touch with these things when we are motivated by protecting ourselves, impressing others, and getting out of everything something that I can take from someone or something else that is not mine and really not mine for the taking in the first place. But entitlement and narcissism will cause you to see this differently, and it is increasingly dangerous how it is so common-place today.
So, thank you for this blog and the meaning behind it. It is real, honest, and touches parts of me and others that are increasingly being threatened...unless I have something happen in my life that forces me to "wake up alone, looking at a corner, only hearing the breath of life that is mine, and clearly seeing what remains hidden from me if I'm not careful."
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