2005-06-27 @ 4:29 p.m. | harvest.
Sometimes I try to let memory sweep over me as I read a string of words or listen to a song or drive along a stretch of road. But the passage to feeling is blocked by a dull, sick ache that poisons my recollection. The memory of emotion is preserved within lyrics and melodies. Harmony pulls at my mind, carrying me back to a time when we were different. It takes me to another place and my brain floods with there and then.
We sit together in the living room and it is cold outside and cold inside. There are trees, aflame with autumn, and there is a gray sky and music, and everything is still. The world seems preserved delicately in ice. I feel as if I am watching myself, as if we are removed from time and space. We are suspended, looking on through a jaded lens.
We are outside. It's a crisp night beneath the stars, and a breeze blows in across the restless moon-silvered water. We like in the damp grass, we talk and laugh. And everything is suddenly tinged with raw, keen-edged pain, like the blade of a knife tearing at some secret and unprotected part. We hide it, silent, smiling, cold.
Autumn. There are countless memories that run together to form a wistful, incoherent dream. There are tangible ones: the scent of incense, nights spent wandering town and forest, ignoring the chill. Swings and long talks in bed and tears on rooftops and bitter words. We hurt each other voicelessly, scoring deeply and carefully. With these wounds comes change; we are never quite the same. And surrounding everything, there is the pervasive melancholy that accompanies the death of summer, the demise of one thing and the birth of something alien.
We are rushing towards an end. I mourn the passing of every second, grasping at time with hopeless futility. I ache to hang on to these moments; I feel that when they are gone from my sight the world will turn to grey. I wish to preserve this bittersweet feeling, at the same time wondering if I will ever be able to recall these times without my heart breaking.
This fall, everything is beautiful, everything is exquisitely painful. Every glance, every word.
These scenes flash through my head, and they, at least, are images that I can describe. They are fragile and motionless, black-and-white snapshots of memory. But there is so much more, an infinite tapestry that is impossible to shape into words. It is a feeling that lives on in grey, foggy autumn days, that is woven amidst words and music. It is resurrected sometimes by chance, and I cling to its sting and loveliness in vain as it slips through my fingers like mist.
Into the orchard I walk
Peering way past the gate
Wilted scenes for us who couldn't wait
Drained by the coldest caress
Stalking shadows ahead;
Halo of death, all I see is departure
Mourners lament, but it's me who's the martyr...
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