Compound Memories

As I was eating my sandwich, here in this very quiet house, a memory was triggered.

It was one of those rare moments when the usual white noise din of electric machinery all happened to be off, so there was actual silence, rather than the usual hum of efficiency... except for the faint background sound of a melancholic bit of piano music playing in the distant background, in Mrs. Denmarkguy's office.

It was loud enough that I could determine that it was "melancholic piano music," but not enough to be intrusive or to be able to really hear it...

I realized it was not a direct memory of anything that was triggered... but a compound memory of many moments across time.

But the memory of what? In a way, it felt more like the memory of a mood than of an actual event. But a memory of what mood?

Whatever mood it might be it almost instantaneously sent me into the state of deep reflection. I considered this for a little while, and it seems like it was the mood of endings, or things that were about to end.

Not necessarily good, nor bad.

I thought about loading the final bits and pieces out of my bankrupt retail store in the late 1990s, and there was a guy sitting in his truck across the oarking lot, eating lunch with the windows open and I could hear bits of sad country music.

I thought about being Spain a couple of decades ago, shortly after my mother passed away and I was closing up her apartment, packing up her stuff for a final time, and through the open window I could hear faint music coming from the nearby security guard house as I sat there wrapping things, in a very silent apartment that used to be full of life.

I thought about the final summer I was at my auntie's house in Denmark before she passed away, and I would sit outside and listen to nothing but grasshoppers and birds in the trees... and faint music came drifting through the woods from the neighbors in their summerhouse.

At the time, I didn't know it would be the last time I saw my Auntie.

I have heard it said that as we age, we are more likely to drift into our memories, most likely as a consequence of the fact that we have more life behind us than we have ahead of us.

It's neither good, not bad, it's simply part of reality.

When I look back on these things, and "sit" with the mood they bring now, it's not really a feeling of sadness I am experiencing. It's more like the feeling that goes with a closed book. Chapters that have ended, whether they be good or bad... they are gone, regardless.

In a sense, it is a bit like a variation of the Japanese Mono no aware idea, the slight sadness we might experience at the eternal transcience of being; of the impermanence that is our existence and all things in it.

Moments tend to be fleeting — much like sunsets — so enjoy then while they are here!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

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Created at 2025.04.07 16:24 PST
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