The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend
- Henri
Bergson
The mind is wily in remembrance; storing frozen images of
experience
no movie trailers of past events replaying in order, only
still life.
Captured as a broken lens would, moments of fractured
resemblance,
they should create a resource, but lack clarity and
coherence;
they should be useful at reunions and other events of social
appearance.
Instead, little carousel slide shows drift willy-nilly
across the mind’s eye;
ragged around the edges, in grayscale or sepia tones of diffidence,
they flutter across my closed eyelids, these frozen images
of experience.
There is one of me at six or seven sitting upon a pine tree
stump just my size
in the warm sun, looking sober and petite, my daddy looking back
at me.
We are walking on Little Dry Creek Road pine woods on either
side,
between my house and Anna’s, a regular ritual of ours
traipsing outside
why does my mind not replay the father-daughter love, the
prize
that abides? A
picture not of 1000 words but of sensations of safety,
and comfort, a drug, a shot, a
boost of heart, snapshots that bring smiles
that touch all the senses and have the power to heal me.
The real work is to rewrite history, to revisit the old
fuzzy memories
that haunt or pain the soul and touch them up, color them
heroic.
Take back the fears, wash them with courage and print them
in a new diary
as happy stories, lessons learned with joy and remembered in
giddy reverie.
Let the memories cease their unchanging stillness nor carry
sorry worries
into the heart.
Transform the mind, engineer the brain to rage poetic
with brave words, bold thoughts and intrepid plans of adventure
and mystery;
newly tattoo the soul with hopeful images; build a new past
and love it.
