The Sound of Memories

Written following a visit to Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX.

At first I didn’t notice them.  I just thought to myself, “the white winged doves sure do like this place,” because they were cooing all over the university campus…their “coo coo ka coooooaahhhh’s” filtering down everywhere through the leaves.  I noticed this as I was walking among the impossibly young students along the cement pathways …going from building to building beneath the large, substantial oak trees that were much smaller and younger when we walked these same paths before.  I saw that almost everywhere I turned they had changed the names and purposes of nearly all the buildings.  And then there were all the new ones I had never seen before.  I pushed aside my tendency to think that they had no right to change these things, so that I could enjoy the memories that sprang spontaneously to mind. 

I made my way over to where it all began…the Student Center where the dance had been held.  The dance that was so thick with implications and magic that I would have suffocated and been brought to a paralyzed standstill if I had not been so oblivious to the marriage, kids, grandchildren, careers, jobs, and all the trails that I have traveled…all the trails that have happened to bring me to be walking again this strange yet familiar campus…an old man among youngsters.  The whole Student Center had been re-done.  The cafeteria where the dance had been held was now just a small snack area with a few tables.  That was the closest thing I could find to the way it was, but it did not diminish in the least the importance of what had happened there, almost 48 years ago.

            I left that building and returned to the sound of doves and continued walking across the campus.  I was disappointed that my memories could not attach themselves to things as they were in the places where they were, but none-the-less, the memories were thick.  I felt like I was walking through the fabric of time…one strand of fabric after another.  They were like force fields I was passing through.  And I began contemplating again the different dimension of the landscape of memories and how it overlays the space-time dimension of the ever-moving now.  And as I stepped through one strand after another of memory I began to notice their intersection with the cooing doves, so I stopped thinking about the content of the memories and exulted in the sensation of passing through the softly, soothing sounds of memory…and I walked and I walked.

Reviews

[alanwgraham]

Memories occupy a much greater part of our thoughts when you reach a certain stage of life. They certainly do for me - but you can't turn the clock back! I can identify with this piece strongly. Well done!
Can i just mention that your second sentence in para two doesn't quite work for me but I can get what you are aiming for. (probably my fault!) Did you mean that the actual dance had so many implications that you would have been paralysed if you had known of them?
You might be interested to read my poem 'Dad the clocks stopped!' Again on how sounds can trigger memories.
Thanks,
Alan

[Clyde Grauke]

Thanks alanwgraham for reading this and posting your review. I agree that the 2nd sentence of the 2nd paragraph is not very clear. What I was getting at was that was exactly what you surmised: "that the actual dance had so many implications that you would have been paralysed if you had known of them."