I had a dream last night, set in the old mobile-home I lived in during the last couple of collegiate years; funny how I dream so much about that place. I only lived there for about three years, but they were important, impactful years that probably have a lot to do with who I am now, so maybe it's not too strange. I spent a lot of time alone there; in fact, I was only half-joking when I referred to it as "the Trailer of Solitude".
I wanted to blog about the dream, so I dug into the unsorted bag I keep all my photos in, and that's when I realized the peril I was in. There's nothing for getting one derailed like trying to find a particular picture in a vast heap of unsorted photographs from all times of one's life. Still, I mustered all my steely resolve and dove in. I knew just the picture I wanted, and so I plowed resolutely through handful after handful, until the inevitable happened, and I discovered a whole sleeve of photos I couldn't even remember taking. From my marriage. From the good times.
NO! I will not be stayed! But I shoved them into a corner of the bag to be perused later. And dug back in, past the back-packing trips, past the college shenanigans, past the parties and band-jobs and pub-crawls and, ever more slowly, through the pictures which I didn't take, gifts from friends, showing me, younger and younger, until I came to a full-stop on a picture in the music store where I grew up, me behind the counter, long, long hair, in full late-70's regalia including silver and turquoise jewelry, wristband and LOOK! even my long-gone senior ring, hocked to buy a birthday gift for a girlfriend who broke up with me only hours after gifting her...
That Trailer of Solitude pic wasn't rising to the surface...if I wanted to think about that dream, write about that dream, write about the perils of the great bog of photographs that live in the closet, I had to pry myself away from all of this. No pic for the blog; in fact, now totally and completely derailed from the dream, the trailer, almost everything except thinking about how I, who try hard to not spend too much time in deep reflection, can be so easily pulled into the swirling downward spiraling drain deep into myself, my past, all the things that were and could've been and maybe, in some ephemeral thread of reality, are.
Ah, that photo bag is a perilous thing!
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If we were to see ourselves at 55 when we were 16, we'd never believe that person was us. Yet that 16 year old was making the choices that led us to being the people we are today.
ReplyDeleteSaint Ignatius of Loyola,
Founder of the Jesuits, famously stated "Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will give you the man."
By 16 our paths are pretty much set along with who we become at 55. The mindset for making the decisions which lead us to that age are firmly established by 16 and we just go along for the ride. It's like winding up a toy car. Once the spring is tight and you release it on the floor, it shoots off at 100 mph but you can glance up and clearly see the wall it will hit in a few seconds. The path is straight and clearly obvious once you let go.
Our early years are winding the spring to our lives. Once we grow up we shoot off in a straight line from where we left and our destination is pretty much obvious although we refuse to see it. We like to think each day is full of choices and we can change anything we please when in fact our choices are limited by our personality to very few options.
Although separated by many years, that 16 year old was still fundamentally you and that will never change.
The Trailer of Solitude was imaged on the Picture of Solitude.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's off by itself in a drawer.