Do you remember?

Remember? Do you remember? Do you? Remember?

Insistent.
Constant.
Annoying.

Do you love me or do you not?
You told me once but I forgot.

Vases that give the impression of being made up by once-shattered-and-then-put-together-again-glass… With millions and zillions of veins running through them…

For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.

Do you remember?
Do you?
Do…?

Too many choices…

Saturday or Sunday?
Black or white?
Turquoise Cottage or TGIF?
Train or plane?
Levi’s or Pepe?
Your place or mine?

Some choices are easier to make, than others.

Do you choose to remember, or not?
Poor Orlando! When he was betrayed by the Russian princess, he went to sleep for a week. And when he awoke, the Russian princess was a hazy recollection. And he was free once again.

Must you die for a little while in order to live again?
Must you sleep for a little while in order to forget?

Do you want to forget?
Do you need to forget?

Some dance to remember
Some dance to forget

Why do you dance?
Oh. Wait.
Let me alter that.
Do you dance?
With the LIIT and the martini and the Marlboro and the madness and the melody and anyone-who-happens-to-walk-into-your-arms??

When you wake up the next morning, do you remember the night before?
Really?
And if you remember, do you want to forget?

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Adam and Eve fall with knowledge… Yet, somehow, “knowledge is power”… Who said that? I forget… It doesn’t really matter…

…hee spent his whole life trying to forget…
…drank away her memory…little at a time…
…never could get drunk enough…to get her off his mind…
…until the time…

Oh, that epiphanic moment!
Is it a moment, really? Or a process…
Has it ceased to matter?
Are you just a cynic tonight?
Or are you reborn, renaissance-d?
Have you found the poetry in the pain?
And are you willing to immortalize it in the landscape of your mind?

Markers of memory…
Parades and festivals and national holidays and commemorations are meant to remind us.

Do not forget.
Do not forget: your history, your people, and your family. You are made up of them.
Do not forget.
Do not.
Don’t.

Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Gooseflesh in a tiny monument at 6:00 AM.

The strains of a song that take you back to a gushing river in the mountains.

A drink that tastes of argument.

Phrases that hold coffee-and-cigarettes-on-a-cold-winter-day.

A face on the street that tugs at your memory.

Lilac sheets that dream of bedtime stories.

Anthems that make you feel like you are part of a movement.

The fragrance of freshly mowed grass and a vision of garden treasure-hunts.

A date equated with a howling mob.

The shirt that that will unbutton the touch of betrayal.

Dimples that make you see dead Prime Ministers.

Staircases that lead to ancestral homes in faraway-small-towns.

A loud noise that rips your consciousness into the smithereens of a series of bomb blasts.

The past is past, and the past is present.
I am you, and you are me.
We have remembered, and we have forgotten.
Chronology collapses.

How long till the world will be completed?
How many times will history repeat it?

And what shall we do with this deceptive glimmer of memory?
Drink to it, he said.
Anyone for an LIIT? Or perhaps, a Margarita?

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance.