Penni, what is a ginger jar lamp? I can imagine different things, exotic things.
None of them as exotic as a lamp filled with memories.
Jeez. What beautiful things.
If memories of the people, and animals, and places, and days, and skies and sunsets and things we knew, disappear when our minds ram-be shuts down finally, I will be upset.
For some reason, just thought of Bookends.
"Time it was,
time it was ~
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories;
they're all that's left you."
(Well, that, and implanted steel.)
I was riding down a rolling hill road, and wondering, "Where are all the memories?"
There was an Indian village off that way just a few feet. More like a city. They've found thousands of arrowheads, ten thousand or so so far. They had to be there a long time; and that's all we've found.
There must have been great people, people who did wonderful and brave and beautiful things, and sacrificed themselves, and built.
I looked over the fields. I want to know those great things. Unbelievable things, and simple things, must have happened. Happened. They did, for certain.
I looked for a while.Then I started to look at the air. The space itself. I thought to look there, because I might be able to materialize those memories, or see them.
Where are they? Don't we need to know them?
Nothing came out of the air.
Whatever could speak was gone.
I knew it had happened there, the proof was all around. I listened hard for memories someone had wanted preserved forever. I knew they had thought; I never, never, want to forget this. A baby's face, mother's smile, a fine day.
A thought came in, "Well, you can make them up, then."
No; you can't.
I wonder how rich you can get, knowing they're there.
Not as rich as they are, the invisible realities.
Yet, I think sometimes fear marks a spot.
And I've heard it said, you don't want to remember what's happened. But, yes, I do. I want to remember the best. The overcomers, the simple, the beautiful. The funny. That's what I want to remember; people who were good to me.
And beautiful places I stood, admitting that the creation is a wildly beautiful place. Trying to gauge up to the beauty I saw; trying to get big enough to take in the biggest thing I've ever seen. When I stood there being mocked as nature put on the grandest show of all. "This, is how big I am," it said. And it was only what I held in my hand.
I try to expand, to remember it, in a new way, a way that will be so big it will remain. That will fill up the whole future mail box to all the corners. That I will never forget; I will always be able to come back here.
I can't see what way that might be; that Way to stamp that memory; what success might be; what technique and intensity will allow it to be color-fast. What branches I might bend, to find her face.
The jar is invisible.
I am afraid sometimes. |
