Time Reminded Me

George Seurat

Time Reminded Me

To remember is not always to go back to what was,

for memory holds seaweed dragging up

wonders,

alien objects that never floated.

A light racing through chasms

lights up earlier years I've never lived

which I recall like yesterday.

About 1900

I was strolling in a Paris park...it was

enveloped in fog.

My dress was the same color as the mist.

The light was the same as now

after seventy years.

Now the brief storm is over

and through the pane I see people walk by

near this window so near the clouds.

A time that is not mine

seems to rain inside my eyes.

Julia Uceda 

That line, "To remember is not always to go back to what was..." stops me in my thoughts. When I first copied this poem into my binder I did so because I enjoyed the misty/Paris/wonders aspect of it, but since then I've realized how true to life it is. How many of my memories are pure recollection? Memory has become self-storytelling. I remember certain facts, but seen in retrospect, I put things together in a narrative that did not exist in the moment. In short, remembering is partially a creative exercise. New things happen, wonders are dragged up, lives I never lived, and yes, "a time that is not mine seems to rain inside my eyes."