2008-10-13
The Search
We were discussing Gogol's "The Overcoat" today in literature and I kept staring out through the window, towards the bridge and cars dashing by and the blinding, clean sunlight filtering through the leaves on the trees.
I was quoted today in someone's diary. At first I didn't realize that it was me and then, upon realizing it, tears almost came to my eyes. I didn't think I wrote like that.
Now to think back at when and why I wrote that particular entry. Freshman year of college. Funny, that that particular year is one I look back on with fondness and in my memory, it is one of rebirth. I can't remember heartbreak, and perhaps my sadness has, over the years, turned into echoes--lost and undulating in the cobwebs of the past.
Though I do remember looking beyond another window, one that stood in my freshman dorm--looking beyond at the cold sky and deadened trees. I do remember that...
I think I've always written from the heart, trying to capture the very things in the bottom of my charcoal heart, turning them into words...though, it is difficult. I've always thought memories ephemeral breaths of hope and regret. And not know how exactly to capture them, I've settled for simply writing about them.
I chase them through a never-ending forest, unable to lose sight of their startled bodies and flapping wings.
Memories are...hypertrophied images and scents that come back during the muted evenings, to stare at us silently--and we, unknowing--and whisper only fragments of our lives. They are what we have when most voices, smells, and faces dissolve in the cold river. These are memories...and sometimes, desperate, we seek them in the stars at night and in the sound of the waves hitting the shore or in the wind's sighs. We seek them in the corners of the walls and in the rain-sprinkled streets, under orange-lit street lamps.
This, our one ambition, is probably what haunts us the most--blinded, desperate, and searching for the faint breath of something that once was. We stand on the shore with arms wide open, and with eyes closed, praying. The soul breaks at the realization that memories are meant to keep themselves distant; as magic creatures, they cannot be touched by us, and perhaps what's important is not whether we can touch them...but rather, what we find while searching.