Reviewing the past
There is a strange state of being that exists hovering between wakefulness and sleep in which the mind has not fully kicked in. It is a reverie. The mind hangs suspended. There is a lazy hand at the wheel. It drifts back and forth. Your life, thoughts, memories and dreams are intermingled.
It is a very pleasant state and one that I regularly enjoy.
Sometimes it appears to me that my life is nothing more than a series of anecdotes held together by some overriding phenomenon that is me. Memories are like the beads on a string. Moments and scenes played out in vivid colour. Around them everything else recedes into a impenetrable fog. The scenes are performed repeatedly and the intervening days, weeks, months and years have been blotted out. They are gone.
Yet even the memories are really vague snatches of what has been. They are not real. They have been redrafted, rearranged, embellished and augmented. Only a hint of the feelings and emotions remain as fleeting, tantalising glimpses.
How I would like to re-inhabit the various people I used to be; to revisit a handful of the forgotten days and become reacquainted with my former selves; to taste that idealism and certainty again.
Perhaps one day soon they will invent a drug that will enable you to do just that; to resurrect the entire experience of a day from the past. I know if that ever happened that I would be first in line. I also know that any drug like that would be instantly banned.
Until then I am quite happy to lie back and reacquaint myself with the scenes from my life, spread out before me like fields seen from a mountain top.
That will have to do.
Reviewing the past
As I awake and lie in limbo,
Not fully connected,
Reviewing the collage of my life –
The could have-beens,
Was and did;
The happenstance,
Chance and wonder,
Spread out
Like a huge quilt of parts
In colour.
All the sadness, ecstasy
And inspiration,
Flashes of understanding;
The loves, losses
And friendships,
The beauty, poetry
And argument –
Like fields seen from afar,
Isolated oasis
Of moments,
Each preserved
As a unique tableau.
As I lay back
To relive those moments –
The yearning,
The unusual,
The fondly remembered
And pathos –
Separated by deserts
Of forgotten days,
Forgotten nothing.
Yet all
Reinvented,
Rearranged
And altered to fit.
Nothing more than a false representation
Of what has been –
Only a life –
Nothing real –
A hazy, reimagined past –
As reality kicks in.
Opher 23.1.2016
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It’s a very important state of consciousness. So don’t worry about having a lie in!
More opportunity would be nice!
That was really good. The past at times is more clear than yesterday. I write a diary every night and there are times when I can’t even remember the morning, not that anything exciting happens – probably forgot how many underpants I had ironed. I have always dreamt, I love to dream better than reality.
Dreaming is great. I bet there are some interesting bits in that diary. Got to go for lunch Anna.
You would be surprised. Have a good lunch. I have to go to Drs for INR Test at 2 so will see you later.
Good luck at the Docs.
Yes the results were better thank you, it had gone up so no clogging or too thin blood, has to be just right and I don’t have to go back for a fortnight, that’s good. Hope you enjoyed your lunch, never do breakfast or lunch.
Good news.
Breakfast and lunch is good!
I do breakfast every day – it’s a serial!
Only you! I can’t eat, all the tablets I have to take on waking make me feel sick for hours, given a tablet to stop that but that has side effects so I won’t take it anymore. Most of the pain I have is caused by the damn tablets.
Try breaking the tablets up into smaller bits!
You have no idea what they taste like, I have to take 9 tabs first thing, during the day and before I go to sleep 10 more plus 6 nurofen to cope with the pain because the official painkillers and Morphine Patch I am on no longer work as my body has got too used to them but told I cannot stop these things. God, I so hate being like this, I really do.
That sounds really hard. But we do what we have to do. I’m sure they are all necessary.
No, they are not Opher they experiment and once you are on these things it does more damage to come off. I was tried on all the Cholesterol drugs last year I did not want but I was told I had to have them, I tried them they caused the most unbelievable pains in my legs could not stand for long periods, taken off one type put on another this went on and on until the Dr ran out of options, by that time damage done I am left with constant pains from my thighs to my knees. New Dr insisted I try again I said No then he said there was an expensive one they could try, got them read the leaflet as I always do and it said clearly “Do not take if you have OsteoArthritis etc”, I do, do not take if you have “Heart Failure”, I do so I will not take them, I am not going through another year like last year, not with San Francisco coming up. Have an appt to see Dr in a few weeks, so shall lie and say I tried them and pain increased.
Yes you’re right. They do not always know what they are doing. They do experiment. But even so they do come up with amazing things that keep us alive.
That depends if you pay for them.
That’s disgusting isn’t it? Those who can afford get a better deal!
There were drugs that they could have given my Husband that would have helped him, found out too late. When I told the Dr one morning I feared David had a slight stroke, he banged his fists on his desk and said “No”, month after David died Dr told me it was a small stroke David had had (that’s not what killed him).
Many doctors don’t like people telling them anything. They are an arrogant bunch.
Yes they lie and can kick you out as quick as anything. No confidence in Doctors/Hospitals/Police and the list goes on
But when you see what happens in other countries you realise they could all be a hell of a lot worse.
Very true (see, no argument, this keyboard is red hot this afternoon).
That’s good. It gets the blood flowing and brain functioning!
Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
Time for a poem or two.