Memories

In my search for new beginnings, I have found that my mind leads me to places that have distinct endings. Some of these places are the physical places that have a point of memory of an event that marked and end of emotion, but I do not remember what it was that ended.
In the back recesses of my memory, small points of light sing out to me as I think of these places. As I approach them, the colors, smells, and textures come into clearer focus playing out a macabre distorting facsimile of a distant reality. I see the faces of past friends and family as they once where, with the current mares of the present tingeing their skin and eyes. Pain that wasn’t there now appears as I try to remember that point, remember what it was that was so important; and why it was seared into my memory to leave me these haunted recollections that fuzz over with time. Details that I failed to notice then, become clearer now, subtle hand motions of a girl friend about to kiss me for the first time, the fire in the eyes of a friend finding out how hard my fist could be slamming against the side of his face. The strange wonderment of my eyes glinting in the mirror as I felt my heart for the first time, breaking under the weight of another’s hand clenching at it, tearing at it, with distant words of a poetic lines of break up. I see these points as they come into few and slide by some pushing into others confusing the picture. Actors of one memory sneaking into the stage of another casting lines that lack sense or actions that damage the memory and change the meaning of its logic to me.
The lack of clarity at these deranged points of memory, showing truly no connections to each other but tied together through the sapping strength of emotions attached to each one. The anger of insult in one, wraps in the anger of dismay of another, no contingency of time or space actually connecting them, now they are conjoined by that one trigging point. They orbit each other repeating again and again in my mind, I feel my pulse harden my skin grow cold as they mesh and morph into another memory, ones locked away deeply, the point of its light so distant and weak I can’t reach but now grows brighter and brighter. The deep green color and sharp tendrils of grass piercing my shirt, cool summer night air illuminated by the strange orange glow of argon lamps, the sweet smell of soft skin touching the my lips, catching of breath, then the sounds of cars. The pleasure seeping away, fading into the background the light fading again, the grass turns warm sand, weird desert skies replace the cool night air, the cars change into a fast moving thunder head crashing down upon the waters of desert lake, hot to cold, bright to dark, cascading to together and then fading out with the wind of a dying desert thunderstorm. Yet I stand reaching for what was pleasant, seeking out pleasure to find it connected to sympathy, and pain. The cycle of one birthing again in memory fades in death to birth another point.
Do moments not connect to one another without any real flow, we are constantly moving from a potential point of light in the chasm of memory to another, where they will either burn intensely or quietly, painful to pleasure, the gathering of each point seems to be lost. Do I begin as anew from a cut line of a director calling for actors to move on cue for certain actions to make perfectly round package that can easily be understood and allow us to sleep without the fear of strange reconciliations of our memories? When do I count the end, as the director of these weird puppet shows play out twisting in my mind, does my memory show its weakness when the points fade, as I hide each and everyone of them behind layers and layers of blackness to keep them from reaching me again.
Pain of regret stings me the most, I stare at myself in a mirror that once stood years ago, and I scream and claw at the shade of me, “Stand up! Do something!” hearing nothing the image fades, morphing into another point the fills the mind with colors of painted cinderblocks of the long hallway filled with people and me hurting for some reason, hurting from wounds inflicted to my pride, the convictions of my violence slipping away. Hate. I think? One maybe others, the sounds that their distorted faces make, still sound not clear, but still there, quietly behind me, quietly. Strange urges, run, laugh, retort…fight. There they stand, in all their glory of school aged children believing themselves men, lining up to show a front against another. The point fades again, the anger changes as the inventions of my own mind complete the memory the way it should have been, the way I should have been, that regret, that pain, the anger fuels it, the director yells action, my hands move, I wish I could have felt their flesh break under mine, the thought riles me to pleasure. But alas, I turned away, I left them, I left them mocking, I left them standing their fueling their pride at the cost of mine, at the cost of my memory being complete, leaving me with regret that I didn’t loose a fight in stance of years of hiding it behind a guise of composer of non activating hate… Do I begin it again? Do I live it again in some dream later, as I have done over and over, that sense of regret, that person that was once me in that mirror, that long ago mirror that I have destroyed hoping to have that point fade, fade to nothing against the every present back drop of memory…