The sun is setting. It is a bright beam of golden light that is blinding to the eye. With each second that it drops lower into the horizon, it dims, gradually fading. Until it will dip below view and disappear from sight, no longer blinding, no longer causing one to squint, no longer giving pain to the eye. The sight once blinded by its brightness now fades into darkness, no longer focused.
Just as the sunlight fades away, so do the memories of life. Ever fading gradually away. The happy moments becoming lost and the painful moments eventually becoming forgotten; their pain dimmed and lessened with time. Yet just as the brightness of the golden sun is recorded upon ones mind, so is the brightness of the most memorable and the most painful occurrences in ones own life recorded.
Thus it is with my life, bits and pieces of events are recorded upon my mind. Some brighter than others. Some only dim flashes of almost forgotten moments. Others mere feelings that are left hanging on. Such as the warmth that was once felt from the setting sun. Yet there are those that play vivid, almost as an instant reenactment of happenings that have hardly faded at all and still carry with them the strongest of emotions and sensations; as though they were currently taking place.
So it is with the smell of the hollyhock, a vivid splash of colorful image crosses my mind. I see the bright colored flowers aligning my great grandmothers’ walk. I see her tender face and I feel the soft touch of her aged hand upon my shoulder; and I, though mature now, feel the feelings of the two year old child, the child who it was that recorded the image to begin with. The love and caring is replayed as though fresh, and that same love and caring felt long ago is rekindled. As the feelings of warmth play, they are almost instantly, if not simultaneously replaced by the feelings of loss. For she soon died a few short seasons following the birth of that special memory. The time of that memory is strong with its knowledge’s of the moment released as though freshly framed. In spite of the memory being strong, it still fades as the fading sunlight.
Then as dusk settles over the view and the smells of the evening are mingled with the aroma of the newly mowed lawn, the mind instantly plays back to a summers day much like this one. Wherein the neighborhood children and myself rolled on the newly cut turf and felt the coolness of the green grass blades against our bare arms and legs and we wiggled our toes in its freshness, allowing our bare feet to be tickled by nature. We inhaled the evening mist and for a moment it is as though I was again six and I am again engulfed with the six year olds feelings as they were and they are given rebirth. Since time had no meaning to the six year old child, it again loses meaning and again causes one to feel that the moment could last forever. In a way it already has, having lasted indefinitely in my mind as a splendid summers eve with nigh a worry to be had.
Then with the last song of the lark before dark sets in, it is as though a video player has been allowed to play, for I see in my head myself with my siblings walking along a dusty country lane with not a house in view. The only sounds being the birds in song and our footsteps in the dust with our breaths sounding heavy in the air. I again can smell the sagebrush as though it were right before my face. The heat of the sun is upon my head and the moment of being ten is present once again, briefly allowing the day to be relived with all its joys and with all of its sorrows, dim yet strong, once again mine.
Now the sun has set and the night air is cool and with it comes a shiver that comes from within and goes on throughout, engulfing the soul with a moment of fear. Only to be calmed by the knowledge that it was a yesteryear and this current moment has nothing to fear but fear itself. For as the yesteryear is past, still it cannot be forgotten for it tarries on. Though not as the here and now, yet it would lend one to believe it were, but as a moment in the past.
That is how I see my life… as images. Yes, images of past forgotten times that replay and come alive in the mind… fresh. Just as the image of the now set sun is fresh within my mind. Its warmth is now gone but can be re-felt with just the mere thought of how nice it had been on the skin. So too are the many happenings of my life. They are there to be accessed by what ever associated image of the now commences the play of the recorded event.
Likewise is this moment being recorded for a future remembering. A future moment of reminiscing. In this second I record the image of the Copenhagen blue mountains below a salmon sky. I record the view with the desire to take up the palate and paint the serene image permanently for all to gaze upon.
There is the birth of the artist. The desire to capture for all to view the images of ones own memory…