images of memory

My music plays in the background but it doesn’t warrant my attention. My eyes are begging for sleep judging by their heaviness, but I continue to sit and stare. I am captivated by the memory of a place, a place I knew so well. It demands my attention and so my thoughts are carried away.

I can remember the smell of my room, as I sit on that bed that was soft and hard at the same time (but it was my bed) and open up a book and read to pass the time after work, or put on my headphones in meditation on something I just read. I remember the daily repetition of actions, reaching over to my ‘shelf’ and grabbing my much used and worn journal. My favorite pen not too far off. Staring out the window I contemplate my thoughts. My gaze mainly fixed on the forest laid out before me like a rich green blanket full of texture. The kind you love to wrap up in on a cold winter day with a cup of coffee in hand.

This place I knew so well, it now seems but a dream. Its grandeur and beauty cause me to disbelieve the reality that it exists. Could I have been so fortunate as to be in a place such as this? Who am I to have had the opportunity to know something this big? It seems so far, yet the images are right here before me, reminding that I was there. That I did experience this. God, I miss it so much.

So, I hold onto these images and claim them as truth. I grip them tight and pull them close. I keep them fresh in my mind. Constructing and reconstructing a place I knew so well. These recollections remind me of a different place, of a different time. Of a different me. The me I was then.

Drink at the fountain of youth. These images are my fountain. They remind me what it is like to be a child again. They remind me of simplicity. They teach me how things can be. With them comes peace. Peace of mind, peace of heart. I am thankful for memories. Thankful that the past is the past but that it is also sometimes a hope for the future.