Things Remembered Differently

Sometimes we remember things as better than what they actually were at the time they occurred.

For so long the tides have hidden away the lost coves of our ancestors; their time, their lives lost in a rage of ever-shifting currents. My mind has felt this way at times; like a lost wonder, it’s sparkling illumination dimmed by the overbearing clutter of present perceptions and anticipations of future events. While tides of the past play out and muddle the vast shores of the present. Take, for example, the perfect geometry of the conch shell, half exposed in the moist sands of the shoreline. But once approached, the shell of awe has been swept away or buried too deeply by this or that wave of thought, of worry, of anticipation. Perceptual distraction, it is a temporary snuffing of emotions we dare not allow ourselves to devour, to experience. Perhaps these feelings are too intense. Too fresh. Perhaps we fear the revelations of unseen existing flaws in the supposed perfect geometry. Perhaps the conch shell was not a prized archaic imprint from the past, to be cherished. Consider, for a moment, the portion hidden under the heavy wet sands were broken, jagged. If we touch it does it cut us? Does it force us to bleed out, that which we have held onto with such vehement lack of veracity? Or can beauty truly be found in the flaws? Flaws in our romanticism of the nostalgic.