What this is about...

Time is passing too quickly. The days run into each other like over-ripened brie oozing across a plate.  I feel the need to push it back, to make it slow down. I think about making a list of the things I want to do and the places I want to see now while I can still do them.  And if not now, then no later than two days from now. But where to start.

Unweighted by a lack of children, husband, elderly parents, feet stuck to soil beneath houses and expectations, I’ve done so many things that I wanted to do already. I am free to make choices, explore, go wherever I please, whenever I please. Friends try to hold me back with fears of what I might encounter, their own dread of a life lived alone and apart from ties, of another leave taking. But I go anyway knowing that I will come back at some time in the future. And if I don’t, then it wasn’t meant to be.

Late at night, I remember. Vision-flashes of places I have been and people I have met or known or passed close to enter my consciousness as I lie in bed, eyes closed against the darkness, feather comforter pulled up close. This running commentary…these citations…are dictations from my inner self of those memories as well as some new ones that may join them as memory-flashes in the future.

When my mother was very old and did not have much longer to live, she began to ask when her mother was coming to visit. I assured her that she would be coming soon, perhaps tomorrow. No need to tell her that her mother was long dead. It would only confuse her more. Will my own mind remember these jotted memories when I am very old, turn them over, ask no one in particular about friends who are long gone, about places I have lived or traveled through, about when my mother is coming to visit. These memory-flashes are like riding on an express subway train, stations flashing by in a blur, slowing and stopping for less than a minute to let passengers on and off. That's what these citations are about.