Why remember?

Rain washes over new green outside my window. Leaves, buds, stalks push their way up and out to lap up clean, fresh water with no memory of the dormancy from which they came, no foreboding of  the winter soon to come. Everything is presence; that which is old, dried out and brittle is broken down, removed and washed away in another time which is not our time.

Why should we look back at all? Is it possible to judge the now for what it was then? Only weeks ago, the graceful bush with the reddish-green leaves was a few brutish red stumps that had broken through the soil like imposters. Isn't it only memory that called those stumps brutish? Could they have been something else? Were they really imposters? How can I ever know the truth about a previous presence, if all I have to rely on is the blunt tool of memory, mine and others'?

Yet, memory too is a part of our now and must be permitted. It provides a frame, a totality, for life's greatest challenge and adventure which is to seek to know and thus to taste humility.  In order to be comfortable in that state of no gravity, no judgment, which invites all manner of doubts and questions about the truth, we must have a frame, allow our memories so that they can be questioned, and seek to know the past and the dead so that we can unknow them.

Dear Reader: Welcome to "The Pendulum" where I explore these questions and many more about which I will also be writing in this blog.

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