The mists of time
Oct. 11th, 2020 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcToday I took advantage of my continuing luck with the local weather by visiting sections of the Antonine Wall, spending most of my time around Rough Castle Fort, established in the second century. Of course, it evoked consideration of the many before me who had looked upon, even lived or worked among, those same fortifications.
Reminders of the much more recent past came to me yesterday. In an online discussion group, I saw a comment written by somebody I knew in high school and may not have seen since. Also yesterday, I saw a bowling green that reminded me of a large, shallow pool at some park I had visited multiple times as a young child, less frequently than Davyhulme Park; it occurred to me that describing it to my mother is probably my only shot at identifying the memory: for so many questions like that, the answers passed away with my parents.
In moving back to the US soon, there are many things I know now that I will carry largely just as my own memories. For example, this week I plan to drive north into the Cairngorms for what might well be a last look first-hand at the beauty of that scenery. Such memories will not be familiar to most others in my new life there.
One item that I have shipped to the US is an oil painting where, what meaning it still retains, I hold on to as best I can. It is a landscape painted by a friend of my grandfather and given as a gift. I know neither who the artist is nor quite where the scene is, my memory suggests 1940s Bavaria, but I believe that it meant something to them so I find it difficult to let it go. It is easy to be reminded of such items as I look into the mirror and see that I increasingly resemble my father.
Lately it feels most apparent that what holds significance to us melts away even within our own lifetime. It may necessarily be so personal and fleeting so I am entertaining the idea that it commends an approach of embracing that unsharability and ephemerality.
Reminders of the much more recent past came to me yesterday. In an online discussion group, I saw a comment written by somebody I knew in high school and may not have seen since. Also yesterday, I saw a bowling green that reminded me of a large, shallow pool at some park I had visited multiple times as a young child, less frequently than Davyhulme Park; it occurred to me that describing it to my mother is probably my only shot at identifying the memory: for so many questions like that, the answers passed away with my parents.
In moving back to the US soon, there are many things I know now that I will carry largely just as my own memories. For example, this week I plan to drive north into the Cairngorms for what might well be a last look first-hand at the beauty of that scenery. Such memories will not be familiar to most others in my new life there.
One item that I have shipped to the US is an oil painting where, what meaning it still retains, I hold on to as best I can. It is a landscape painted by a friend of my grandfather and given as a gift. I know neither who the artist is nor quite where the scene is, my memory suggests 1940s Bavaria, but I believe that it meant something to them so I find it difficult to let it go. It is easy to be reminded of such items as I look into the mirror and see that I increasingly resemble my father.
Lately it feels most apparent that what holds significance to us melts away even within our own lifetime. It may necessarily be so personal and fleeting so I am entertaining the idea that it commends an approach of embracing that unsharability and ephemerality.
