Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The Objects Of Lost Memories



We are all gripped at moments, in instances, where we are uncontrollably inclined to a feeling of a time gone by.

I was seated at my regular cafe on a regular afternoon/evening after work when the red, and very specific red, of an automobile caught my peripheral vision. In less than a second, as I glanced up, I knew it was not the car I once loved and owned and took to growing up in. But it was the same make and model and the same fading colour red that mine had been, that showed signs of being taken care of, as mine.

Fixing my eyes to it driving slowly across the intersection, I studied it to just make sure it was not my previous ride fixed with different registration plates. Then, the installation of a towbar to the rear made it clear it was not mine and the wheels, which, though were the factory option alloys in an 'at a distance' nice condition too.

There's a particular amazing feeling, that the word nostalgia doesn't seem fulfilling enough to describe. When you are reminded of a particular time of your life, in relation to your transient position, by an object previously owned. And you have that instant and fleeting inclination of desire for it again, as though feeling it at your finger tips, seeing and inspecting it, will draw you back through the realm of time, to somehow stitch the moment then to the one currently and rapidly transmitting through your brain, with the romanticised and irrational, mostly subconscious determination, that you'll feel compounded in your amazement and high spirits.

And that feeling remains with you a little while but gets shelved further and further away by life's distractions for some time until it's incredibly buried. But oh, those moments of rediscovery and the triumphant feeling of being, when you do happen to again.

The tiniest flutter of hope it was my old Honda City, that I once owned, sparked at such a speed, a wistful feeling inside me. And in that flash-before-your-eyes fashion a whole period of my life became before my mind's eye and I recalled with great taste the feelings that car and the ventures associated with brought upon me.

Of final thought: We are all, most certainly, gripped at surprising moments, in instances, where we are uncontrollably inclined to a feeling of a time when life might not have been good, but there were good feelings to be had and what we all want to continue to return to is those good feelings. Relive a moment over and over and over again. The irony I see is, that we go through life acquiring these patterns and moments and occasions and instances where, we at the time don't entirely realise it, but come out of them having grown or changed or felt something, and we need to mark in our memories the significance and importance of them so as to cling to them vitally as though they are part of our body we cannot live without. And for the increasing acquisition of them, we feel more neediness and increased dependence. We start to live further and further in the past. Until the moment, when closest to death, all we know is the past and there is nothing else.

I was sent a letter with a message contending, frankly, that there is no knowing in life until the post. A person, a decision, an inclination, an answer. That knowing consists only of expectation, potential, wishes and fears until the results of what happens later. So, perhaps that is life; spending one's time collecting memories with the plight of gaining knowledge and it's retention until it consumes us and is all we have left.






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