remembering

We want so badly to be happy _ to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we__ live _ that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.

If you knew you were going to lose your memorybut you could choose five things you__ never forget, what would they be__ certain face, a taste, a scent,a touch; how deepin this, the middle of your life?

He could swear he did not look back, could not__y any optical chance, or in any prism__ave seen her physically as he walked away; and yet, with dreadful distinction, he retained forever a composite picture of her standing where he left her. The picture__hich penetrated him, through an eye in the back of his head, through his vitreous spinal canal, and could never be lived down, never__onsisted of a selection and blend of such random images and expressions of hers that had affected him with a pang of intolerable remorse at various moments in the past.

No person is more ruthlessly cheated than someone strip-mined of his or her ability to recall the vibrancy of the past. After all, what would any person be if robbed of all sense of long-term memory? Without memories, all that any person would know about life is if he or she was hungry or thirsty, cold or hot. Without memories of the past and shredded of any illusion of a future there cannot be a frame for our existence. Without a sense of memory, we lack cognition of the very essence of our being. In absence of our memories, there can be no introspection, no ethical awareness, and no devotion, loyalty, or love.

A lifetime of memories does not provide empirical proof of the value of living. No one memory has a quantifiable value to anyone expect the holder of the memory. Parenting in large part consists of creating positive memories for children. An accumulation of a lifetime of memories does create a musical score that we can assess from an artistic if not scientific perspective. Each happy memory generates a beat of minor joy that when strung together form the musical notes demarking a person__ prosodic inner tune.

Memo_y was a curse, yes, he thought, but it was also the greatest gift. Because if you lost memory you lost everything.

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts_.We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need__ot all the time, surely, but from time to time__o enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember__he room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.

People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things - where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance - but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget... There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget... So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

so here i sit. a sum of the parts. about a third way down this wonderful path, so to speak. and i've been thinking lately about a friendship that fell apart with time, with distance, and with the misunderstanding of youth. i'm trying not to confuse sadness with regret. not the easiest thing at times. i dont regret that certain things happened. i understand that perhaps i had a choice in the matter, or perhaps i believe in fate. probably not, but so far actions as small as the quickest glance to events as monumental as death have pushed me slowly along to right here, right now. there was no other way to get here. the meandering and erratic path was actually the straightest of lines. take away a handful of angry words, things once thought of as mistakes or regrets, and i'm suddenly a different person with a different history, a different future. that, i would regret. so here i sit. thinking about a person i once called my best friends. a man who might be full of sadness and regret, who might not give a damn, or who might, just might, remember the future and realize that's where its at.

When you choose your life, ignore people, when you make it in life, remember some friends, when you sing a song, praise your source, when predicaments arises, stand your ground.

Asha stared as Mari for a while, her face once again betraying no emotions. "When we were acolytes, newly come to the Mage Guild Hall on Ihris, Mage Alain once tried to catch me as I fell. He was punished for this." Her gaze went to Alain. "We talked. In the first days. Before such things were driven from us. He was...he could have been...someone...""A friend," Alain said."Friend." Asha seemed to be looking inward now, as if searching for memories lost in time. "What does this mean?"Alain's voice took on more feeling. "It is someone who helps.""Helps?" Asha suddenly inhaled strongly. "I remember. When all else was gone...Alain...helps...helped...me.""We were taught to forget this," Alain said. "Master Mechanic Mari reminded me of what it meant. She has reminded me of many things. She must do something of great importance. Will you help me now, Mage Asha?"Here gaze rested on Alain, then went back to Mari. "This Mechanic helps Mage Alain. I will help, too. I will not betray you to the Guild, Mage Alain.

I remember you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.

beneath the stars that drift; she sighed and said "Every tale of a love can only be a tale of ghosts that linger in these spaces wecan never hold,"__s the wind gave echo

Anything said is gone as soon as it leaves my lips. Things written down at least have a chance to leave a soft echo of what had been.

She likes to write messages on balloons and send them to the sky. She takes out a black Magic Marker and she starts writing on the dozen or so balloons, one for each member of our family who died. She doesn't think she can write well and asks me not to read her notes.She likes to think they'll soar all the way to heaven. I think she knows they end up tangled in power lines or deflated in a pile of orange leaves in someone's backyard miles away, but I can never bring myself to say that to her. I've often wondered what they must think, those people who find our balloons. I've wondered if they read the messages and understand what they mean.I remember watching those balloons as a little boy, each fall, wondering if someday I, too, would be nothing but a balloon in the sky, soaring toward the sun until I began to fall slowly back to earth and into the hands of a stranger.

I figured we really shouldn__ grieve for those who leave us for God. They__e arrived at their destinations with lucky souls no longer burdened by our piddling human considerations. It may seem cruel when they die so young or so beautiful or so loved. Cry not for them, for the life not lived. Cry only for your own hurt in missing them. That__ the only true loss. And in those sad moments when you remember a touch, or catch them watching from the corner of your eye, understand they left you with a lesson. Everyone who touches your life teaches you something important you__e meant to learn. Somehow their visit here pushed your own soul along its path. Learning that lesson is the best way you can honor them.

I hope my forgiveness reminds you,Of the part you forgot to break in me.