try to remember

our memories are the only paradise from which we can never be expelled ~~ jean-paul richter

now those memories come back to haunt me
they haunt me like a curse
~~ bruce springsteen

the mind is a dangerous place. when i finally allowed and reorganized involuntary bodily functions like breathing and digesting, i knew i had to do something with the pile of gorgeous memories. my own emotional elgin marbles. i couldn't sort it -- it was too huge and the pointing too secure. i couldn't share it -- an abandoned mistress' heartbreak? HAHA!!! i couldn't give that away to an emotional anorexic.

i couldn't allow myself to still hold any of the goodness. other break-ups i could say, *this* was good, *that* was very not good. how could i codify, qualify, something neither of us wanted to end? something that was always good?

i could not let go. if i released even a bit, it would have ALL blown up.

a.d. 79. mt. vesuvius went kaplooey.

it had been the elite's peaceful bit of beachfront skyline for more than 1000 years. at a very impressionable age i visited the ruins at pompeii and the barely begun dig at herculaneum. on display, in separate cases, were the helpless dog, (canis, sheesh, they all looked the same back then, lol) the man and the lovers. all buried deeper and deeper over the next several hundred years by subsequent eruptions.

we walked. saw the baths, the brothel, the marketplace, the likely town hall. we saw the gorgeous mosaics and sculptures in the courtyards and foyers. it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine padding in sandals through the dusty summer streets nearly 2000 years before to get bread and that era's equivalent of the sunday times.

so some dotty brits showed up with hammers and tossed some pound notes at victor emmanuel? hello, context? that lone man trapped by lava? maybe he was horrid or infirm and his wife abandoned him to the rushing melt? those "lovers"? were they hateful spouses trapped in battle at just the wrong moment? to a wistful victorian it seemed romantic, but could have been a murderous take-down, ya know?

since that doozy vesuvius has blown up massively about 30 times, killing thousands and smothering rebuilt villages. the history and memories got pushed further down by sheer force of nature.

he remembers details i could not allow myself to hold. i had to bury them to rebuild. it's especially painful for me because i enjoyed my mental file so much. it allowed for a seamlessness that i truly prefer. i will err on the side of caution, but he knows i have no engineer. it's just me winging the do-over.