The Museum

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

Lyndon Johnson
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Hello Arlene
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Sometimes I think the concept of time is one of our worst enemies. It's a vast, somber, dimly lit museum where live all the events of our lives, most of them forgotten about. But there are two rooms where the lights go on and off at random times and in those rooms are displayed some of the more colorful artifacts and anecdotes, the shards of experience. One room is The Happy Memories Room and the other is simply called Regrets. I try not to visit that room although sometimes I'm coaxed into it. I visit the Happy Memories Room on occasion, usually to cite some experience for this journal or to tell a story to a friend. The fact is I see no point at all in visiting either of those rooms, or the entire museum as a whole. Everything in there is from my past, or rather my memory of my past. To walk through either of those rooms is to invite a particular form of irreversible trouble. The temptation is to stay. It's a mesmeric trick that takes over our sense of direction and destination. (The same trick that makes us take the wrong exit off the highway.) If we think we are being asked to stay and enjoy the lagony and ecstasy of the past in either room, we should get out fast before the door closes.

Today marks one month I have been in my new home. I should actually call it my home because my former dwelling was anything but a home if home is where you are supposed to be comfortable, at ease and safe.

Since moving here I've acquired some furniture, have my paintings out of boxes and leaning up against walls and windows where I can see them, have had my books arranged, disarranged, rearranged, disarranged again and in the process of being rearranged. Thanks to the tireless Linda R. and her visits I'm slowly getting myself in the proper alignment with what I have in my mind as a home. I'm down to about 98% of the pain I brought with me and most of that has turned into disgust.

I have noisy neighbors, not the rock and roll noisy types with their ear splitting entertainment. These are the argue-with-each-other type which I don't mind. There are no dope dealers in the place as far as I can tell. No one could sneak in anyway since their apartment door is right outside my bedroom window. "Let the dead bury their dead."

I think the most important item I brought with me is my future. As memories and regrets, past and current, take their places in the dusty museum of my former life I look forward at what can be, what should be and what will be.

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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