MORE THAN a hundred moons ago, an old friend once told me four-leaf clovers do not exist. They’re like the blue moon, he added. But I swear that once in a time, not so long ago, in a patch of grass with weeds all around, I happened to discover that four-leaf anomaly, enough to pluck it from its clover-like clump of similar-looking plants and flattened it inside the pages of the paperback I’ve been reading.
But I still have to ask, do we even have clovers here? Or was my late friend correct after all? As for his tale of a blue moon, wasn’t that only referring to its being a rarity and not its impossibility?
No matter, it’s really not so strange, running conversations like these from the past sometimes roll up so easily during my many pensive, if not idle senior moments. At this, I also wonder if the old saying, ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop’, still holds true. Surely, old memories and those involving exchanges with people long gone can’t possibly be a bad thing, or is it?
“You are someone else, I am still right here. What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end.”
Johnny Cash – American singer-songwriter
Not so sure anymore. This is so because I have also read that rumination and being introverted at times can be bad medicine. It’s scary sometimes, especially so when I recently saw Ethan Hawke in an interview say, Depression is a real demon hiding in the woods.
Anyway, I just recently read an IG passage: “A strange part of adulthood that no one talks about is that we are all homesick for a place and time that no longer exists.” That must explain it then.
However, suddenly my talent for sequencing fails me here; I’m not sure anymore if reading the above passage must have been the spark that led me to daydream once again and get lost in long-forgotten conversations, which eerily feel real at times. I could smell the air of the past around me. Most often during episodes like these, it’s the strong aroma of espresso filling up the air and accompanying my black and white reruns.
It cannot be denied that our memories of old places and people in our past are like welcome glimpses of sunbeams. They’re so easy for the mind to carry, unlike the tons of regrets we lug around, which fester like cobwebs in older minds. I can only hope that in our lifetime, they could invent and plug something into our grey matter, transfer the million terabytes of memories into film so we can watch them play before our eyes once again.
Until that time, capturing the past is still comforting but taxing. I’ve a friend who’s slowly losing his memory, and I can only feel deeply for him. He once looked puzzled still, even as I removed my face mask. A full three seconds before a cognizant smile. Another three, and I had to finally volunteer my family name. At this, I am reminded of one of the late Johnny Cash’s songs, which he composed before he died.
“You are someone else, I am still right here. What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end.”
