Photo By: Mel Fechter
During this voyage I have retrieved many editions from my memory library. Most have shown obvious signs that they have been shelved for a very long time. A thick layer of the dust of time at first obscured their beauty, but a wipe with a soft dust cloth of gentle recall was able to expose their hidden pulchritude. Now rescued from the captivity of those dark and dank shelves, they began to show off their long hidden attributes. After being brought out into the light of day, most of the volumes showed little wear, like they had not been checked out of the library very often. Their gilded edges were still shiny and golden, their covers colorful and bright. The pages were not torn or marked up, or the corners bent over to show where former readers had left off. However, there were a few that were obviously favorites, showing the wear of frequent use in the past. But they were all there offering themselves equally, ready to be checked out for the allotted period of time before being returned to their shelves, awaiting the next time anyone was interested in seeing what they had to offer. So far most of them have been strictly visual clips, snapshots of people and occasions, and could be viewed with a pleasant but detached recognition of familiarity, like looking through an old photo album. However, a select few also offered additional dimensions, like smells or sounds or even motion. But all evoked some kind of feeling, maybe a warmth that called forth a smile, or sensations of fear, sorrow, or regret that brought on dark waves of self-doubt, or rides on the “what if” bus. But each in its own way has contributed to this voyage of self-discovery. just the writing of this entry has shown me things I had not thought of before. For instance, when was the last time you heard the word “pulchritude” used in a sentence? I only used it here because I needed another word for “beauty”. So I consulted the thesaurus and found pulchritude, an example from my now almost extinct verbal treasure chest. This has happened often in my wanderings on this voyage, although I rarely let on that I didn’t have such colorful verbiage always at the ready on the tip of my tongue. I usually get by with my old 1961 thesaurus, but occasionally I have had to scour many pages of an online resource before finding just the right word. If you think coming up with the alliterations for the titles of these website pages was easy, think again. I spent a whole day on those. As a result I have enhanced my self-discovery by consciously observing in myself this demonstration of my dogged determination (oops, accidental alliteration, really) to get it perfect. All the while I have been intentionally hiding the fact that I have lost much of the fancy vocabulary of my younger days to the dust of old age. I started this blog entry intending to explore examples of specific memories, as they relate to what I just talked about. However, this discussion has taken on a life of its own, so in the interest of allowing you to escape from any further diatribe today, I will reserve the actual analysis of specific memories for a future entry.
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