Memories

Weather often triggers memories.  It has been very hot here (Chong Khae, Thailand), but today there are fluffy, dark-flat bottom, clouds that remind me of fall in NH, the fleecy cloud parts anyway.  It is inexplicable because it is at least 25° warmer than it should be.  Perhaps it is the drop in humidity, dunno.

I also remember a dip in the catty-corner black, tar path behind the town common that ran from about the Ford garage toward Martel’s.  I also remember a stone that jutted out in the north east Corner of the foundation of the New Boston Town Hall on the ball field side.  As with some of our first memories from childhood, I have no context for either of these memories.  They just exist.

History is like this, I think.  We see old postcards from before we were born and try to build a context of what’s going on, or dismiss the blood sweat and tears context entirely.  I think of Edith Wharton on one of her “flying” trips with Henry James by her side early in the Century(they were riding in an open car, not a plane) driving past a small NH town and beginning Ethan Frome as context.  Whether this is mortifying or enlightening doesn’t make much difference for the truth is we know as little about the context of the past as we do the future.

Notes (Face Book)  May 20, 2015

While not poetry, I wanted to alert people that my first novel Rivers & Prayers is available for free (shipping and handling only).  You can see my thought about this book on www.mydoomsdaybook.blogspot.com 

Let me know if interested.  Thanks, Forrest