Reminiscing

June 1st, 1995
An old song, a familiar lost smell that brings such longing you have to reach back.
Things half-remembered, good and bad, come back from Then and are Now again – first hazy, then wonderfully or terribly clear and real, depending on what happened and on the choices you made. But either way there’s a pang of regret that you can’t bring it back – either to do the things you left undone, or to feel and do and be what you felt and did and were back then.
A sweet moment you want to catch and hold forever, an old scar exploding into fresh pain (and still bleeding); the Book that tastes like honey in the mouth but is bitter to the stomach; remembering only now all you should have done but didn’t, all you shouldn’t have done but did, and how much you miss her, and how you lost that chance to change his life for the better; and where did all the time go? Why didn’t you spend more of it on the things that mattered?
“Why didn’t I”s and “It might have been”s tumble over “I remember when”s and “Wasn’t that beautiful?” That time of perfect harmony with a friend you never talk to anymore; that bitter hatred you held Then against your best friend Now; no excuses because it’s been so long you don’t need them anymore, only the plain truth as it was and never can be again.
You close the Book, having had too much honey-and-gall; you think maybe you’ll go call that person but you really know better; you know an hour of Now will wipe away an eternity of Then, and you’ll forget all over again until the next time the Book calls to you from the shelf, to be opened and lived again as it opens you and reminds you once more that your life is short and daily growing shorter, that there’s no room for false pretences and no time for hesitating. The wheel turns on, with neither pity nor malice, but it will not wait.

© John M. Munzer