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boggled
: bog-guld. verb [ intrans. ] informal.
To be astonished or overwhelmed when
trying to imagine something
Good
word, “boggled,” and it accurately describes my mind a great deal
of the time, especially when I look back on yesterday afternoon and
realize it was in fact several months, years, or decades ago. It is
especially applicable to my response upon reflecting on loss.
Loss
is a part of life. We all experience it…some more than others…and
each must learn to deal with it in our own way. I have never handled
loss well, and even though I always manage to get on with my life
after each one, its ghost joins the many others restlessly walking
the halls of my mind, the shuffling of its feet sending up little
clouds of memory. I have developed the ability to largely ignore
them, but if I’m not careful,…
I
came across a batch of photos of my last house in Los Angeles;
probably the nicest house I have ever owned. I've been gone from Los
Angeles for...dear Lord...almost 30 years, now? Impossible. (See:
boggled) But no matter; looking at the photos, the ghosts of
time reached out and grabbed me yet again, carrying me back to a
place I cannot go.
That
these ghosts grab me is one thing…what really hurts is their
whispered taunting: “You had this once. Remember? Look. You’re
almost there again. Just reach out, and…” and then the humorless
laughter before they continue: “Oh, that's right; you can't, can
you? It is gone, and you will never have it again. You will never sit
at the breakfast room table, or look out at the hill behind the
house, or spend time with the friends and conquests who came and went
with comforting frequency. You can look at these photos, but you
cannot have what you had there. Never again.”
While
I am given to melodrama, as you may have noticed, I am being sincere
when I say that those rare occasions when I allow myself to dwell on
the whispers are not only mentally excruciating but actually cause a
definite physical tightening of my chest. I had it. I want it! I want
to see and talk to and touch all those people who were so much a part
of my life. I miss them terribly.
I
know, too, that this dwelling on the past makes me—wrongly, I can
assure you—seem ungrateful for the present and all the good things
and people around me today, and I apologize for that, but it is
simply the way I am, and I can’t change it.
Since
I was a very small child, I have been aware that each passing minute
brings me closer to the time when I will no longer be here, and that
thought can, if I allow it to be, terrifying. Not the idea of death,
but that I will no longer be able to enjoy life. And as a perverse
result, many of the good times of my present are tainted by the
realization that, even as I am enjoying them, I know they must pass
and become more ghosts to wander my mind.
As
I’ve mentioned often before, I spend the majority of my time
storing up bits and pieces of myself as a squirrel gathers nuts; not
for the winter but for the time when I will no longer be physically
alive. I fervently hope others may find my books, my letters, my
blogs, all small parts of who this Roger/Dorien person was and is. I
would hope that they might enjoy my cache and allow me to live once
again through their viewing of them. The irony of that fact I won't
know if they ever do certainly does not escape me. Even as I write
this, I am bitterly resentful of the fact that my physical body,
already far from its best, will at some point simply cease to exist.
It’s been a good body, and it has served me very well, and I feel
sorrow that it cannot always do so. I still have it, but I deeply
miss it already.
Have
I perchance happened to mention that I do not like reality? My body
is forced to live in it, but my mind refuses to.
Also,
as I write these little exercises in seemingly maudlin self
indulgence, I wonder exactly why I expect you, who have your own
life, your own losses, to have any interest at all in mine…and the
answer is, as always, that I trust you may see in me parts of
yourself, and realize that we humans are not quite as…I started to
say “unique,” but prefer to substitute “alone”…as we
sometimes feel.
Dorien's
blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday. Please take a moment to visit his website
(http://www.doriengrey.com)
and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short
Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1).
1 comment:
I sometimes feel that way about (and don't laugh) where I went to college. That's where I really came into my own as a writer and as a person. I have pictures and I'm still in touch with a few people from that time, but the place itself has grown into something I don't recognize.
I'll never get that place back, not here.
But what keeps me going is that it still exists in my mind. I still visit it, still walk the cold, snowy pathways, hear the wind, feel the rain, smell the wet grass and listen for the sound of approaching laughter from other students.
It's enough to keep me satisfied...just until I can invent time travel.
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