memory has no memory

 

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Our lives, it seems, are a memory 

we had once in another place. 

Or are they its metaphor? 

The trees, if trees they are, seem the same, 

and the creeks do. 

The sunlight blurts its lucidity in the same way, 

And the clouds, if clouds they really are, 

still follow us, 

one after one, as they did in the old sky, in the old place. 

I wanted the metaphor, if metaphor it is, to remain 

always the same one. 

I wanted the hills to be the same, 

And the rivers too, 

especially the old rivers, 

The French Broad and Little Pigeon, the Holston and Tennessee, 

And me beside them, under the stopped clouds and stopped stars. 

I wanted to walk in that metaphor, 

untouched by time's corruption. 

I wanted the memory adamantine, never-changing. 

I wanted the memory amber, 

and me in it,

A figure among its translucent highlights and swirls, 

Mid-stride in its glittery motions. 

Wanted the memory cloud-sharp and river-sharp, 

My place inside it transfiguring, ever-still, 

no wind and no wave.

But memory has no memory. Or metaphor. 

It moves as it wants to move, 

and never measures the distance. 

People have died of thirst in crossing a memory. 

Our lives are summer cotton, it seems, 

and good for a season. 

The wind blows, the rivers run, and waves come to a head. 

Memory's logo is the abyss, and that’s no metaphor. 

—Charles Wright
Transparencies, Scar Tissue

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The moment one thinks of the matter, one sees how false a notion of experience that is which would make it tantamount to the mere presence to the senses of an outward order. Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. 

Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. 

Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground —intelligible perspective, in a word.


—William James

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I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing.


—Cormac McCarthy

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