This very moment

Just think of only this

The past cannot return

The future can not be known

-Attributed to Ryokan

I was late. My parents would be piling us all in the car to leave for the airport at any moment and I had not even begun to pack my clothes. My alarm went off and I scrambled out of bed, shoving clothes into a duffle bag. One T-shirt made it in before I realized that we were not going on a cruise and it was just an ordinary Tuesday morning before school. It had all been a dream.

Dreams are ever interesting to the dreamer. We awake with a start after having been lost in some impossible maze, or chased by a monster, or flying as high as the birds in the sky, or seeing a lost loved one’s face. And we feel the need to tell someone and to figure out the hidden symbols, the message that is wrapped in the unconscious. 

And yet, as we begin to speak and relate the horrors or the mysteries, there is something lost in the words. It can’t help but feel incomplete, a poor sketch of the kaleidoscopic picture. We just can’t tell them how it felt to be wrapped up in the dream world and slowly, slowly the dream world fades completely away. But a handful remain.

When I was young enough to enjoy the novelty of staying up late, I remember one evening where I sat out on our red deck. Perched on the railing, I stared up at the winking white lights fixed in the black-blue sky. Lavender planted along the sides of the deck kept the mosquitos at bay. Whenever I smell lavender I think of lavender oil rubbed on childhood bruises, drops on pillowcases to help us fall asleep, and nights on the old wooden deck which was full of splinters.

Memory is not unlike a dream. Most live in our minds as half-pictures, feelings, and shadows. Except for those lucky few of us who can recall the most minute details exactly, they live weakly in our minds drawn to the surface by a chance phrase or scent. Only a handful stand out with clarity.

Even knowing how notoriously unreliable memory is, as many eye-witness accounts have later revealed, we clutch them to ourselves. It is memory which often defines who we are and who people are to us. We store them in picture albums and journals, collect them in knick-knacks and magnets. They become our most treasured companions in moments of loneliness and sorrow.

And yet, we think we see, but we only see in part. We think we remember, but imagination fills in the holes and patches the missing parts. It is what our minds do, afterall. And it is happening all the time. The past follows us from moment to moment, for better or worse. It is the stick by which we measure each experience. 

There once was a moment while walking, I saw sparrows take flight. They moved as one being, one flowing body which lifted lightly into the air. I saw the whole of the flock move, and the flapping unique to each. And then it was over so quickly. The birds settled once more on a patch of grass a few feet away. What I had seen had been there and then it was gone–or really, it had been there and then there and then there and then there. Each second stood out, independent of a past and of a future.

 As I watch the memories and the dreams go by, they swirl together. They are not so separate when all is said and done. One we cling to, another we let go.