Those who forget

Memory is a funny thing.

Memories are even funnier things.

They seem so concrete and so incorporeal at the same time, two sides of the same coin. For me, memory is not just visual, seeing things in that weird, gray space behind my eyes. I can actually feel the memory. Smell the memory. Hear the memory. (Maybe you can, too, but I'm in the weird, gray space behind my eyes, not your eyes, so I wouldn't know, would I?)

Sometimes it's a dream that sets it off. Or maybe it's the dream that's being set off. A dream can affect the way I feel for the whole day if it stikes that nerve at the center of a memory, sending waves radiating through me. Like a song stuck in your head, repeating over and over, until it's almost unintelligible and retains so little connection to where it started that it almost seems like something new.

Or maybe it's the song itself. Random songs, like Possum Kingdom by The Toadies, or Headed for a Heartbreak by Winger. Songs that dredge up the feeling I was wrapped in when I first heard it or when it played at a time when my emotions were exposed and ripe for insinuation.

Sometimes memories are like having an ache in a tooth. Not a sharp pain, but a dull ache, the kind where I can't keep myself from pressing my tonuge against the tooth or clenching my teeth, just to remind myself what it feels like. The pain flares up and fades, rises and subsides like the shadows in the woods on a moonless night.

Happening on a forgotten scrap of writing. Catching just the edge of a perfume wake or a breeze that passed through pine trees. Some building or clearing, echoing images off the canyon wall in that weird, gray space behind my eyes.

There are those who forget, and for some, that may be best. Not every memory is something to keep in a drawer, where you can take it out every now and then and turn it over in your hands. But if you do have memories in your drawer, like I do, you are destined to repeat.

I never promised you a rose garden...

OK...so I didn't promise scintillating content. (Or any kind of regular updates, apparently...)

I've never really been one to keep up with a diary, online or otherwise. And my problem with personal web pages has never been a lack of will or desire to create...it's always been a dearth of content.

Of course, there's always that part of my brain the chirps, "If you have time to blog, you have time to work on that non-personal website that you've been neglecting, you slacker!".

So...I still don't know what this blog is going to be about. And I'm still not going to promise gripping content, although I suppose I could make more of an effort to reward loyal followers (or possibly follower) with something approaching regular updates.

It takes time to organize your sock drawer. That's why people don't do it that often...

What's in your sock drawer?

As I sit here looking out my dining room window at the verdant jungle of waving grass that is my back yard, listening to the dulcet tones of Rammstein, I can help but wonder: what the bloody #$*@ possessed me to put up a blog?

Peer pressure, I guess.

That's not quite right. I suppose I have been nurturing a desire to connect with the collective consciousness as much as the next faceless keyboard over. But an online diary? A periodic glimpse into the bureau in my head? What suddenly makes me think it's a good idea to toss all the neatly balled-up socks over my shoulder to get to all the spare change and buttons at the bottom of my sock drawer?

Socks?

Who is this guy?

This blog sat empty for a day after I set it up. Someone (a peer...) said I should put something in it.

So I have.