This feeling like I forgot something that I’m on the verge of remembering is often floating over my head, especially in the morning. It feels like I need to pick back up something I left behind. I think it’s just a feeling. There’s probably words for it in some other languages. It’s a pleasant feeling. When I’m on the verge of feeling balanced and emotionally stable again, it comes. As though to say: now that you’ve got that cleared up, should we continue…? But what?
It kind of leaves me chasing a fairy light down mental corridors.
I think there are so many things it is. So many things that were good for me, worked well for me, that fell away from me during turbulent times, that I had to leave behind. My thoughts always turn to perfume when I have this feeling. Because perfume brings me so close to the past, closer than any other experience.
Going to Barnes & Noble yesterday was poignant. Actually, everything yesterday was wonderful. Walking in the sunlight again. Walking down to the cemetery. I first walked there in 2007. I discovered the cemetery by chance. I was dimly aware I was near a college but didn’t know much about it. What if I had gone to graduate school then? I tell myself I couldn’t have gone to graduate school any sooner than I did. It wouldn’t have worked. I had too many unresolved emotions and situations in my life. I couldn’t have gone to graduate school even a moment sooner than I did and had the clear-headedness and emotional fortitude to continue on with it. But there is still a lot of pain and confusion in this idea. What was the last fifteen years? Did it have to be this way? I feel like there are echoes in Beethoven’s phrase “Muss es sein?” that I feel in this question.
Sunlight-Colored Roses 