Memories are a cruelty. They come swimming up from the depths in moments we are least prepared, breaking surface just long enough to tender ourselves vulnerable all over again to things nevermore. Memories may be nothing more than mere echoes from our pasts; yet, they come to us with all the force of Sirens calling. We yield, reaching out our hands seeking to embrace them, to dive into those waters and swim to them at the surface between now’s consciousness and yester’s forgetfulness. We mourn in remembering peoples and times when things were different. And even if we dive back into Nox’s depths with our memories there is nothing to sustain us there, nothing to nurture us: only a slow, lethargic drowning is ours. For us to remain too long with our memories, no matter how beautiful a shadow they are of things past, is our ‘sured death.
Memories are a blessing. They, too, dull their edge with time so that what once rendered flesh separate from muscle and bone with a mere flick becomes nothing more penetrating than a dull stick rubbed against flesh in a vain attempt to cut sinew. But what was too virulent in its original form comes to us now sufficiently weakened and we sufficiently inoculated that we can finally understand its true nature. We can look with more wisdom and inner reflection on moments in our lives when we were broken down to nothing much more than a fleshy sack of pulverized bone. We in this form, an organic lump of clay, had to be crafted and remade anew into our current form. These memories are offerings to us allowing us to learn from a time when then we could not.
Cruel memories. Blessed memories.
