Memory is a funny thing. It is a sneaky thing. It is sometimes a mean and vicious thing and sometimes it is wonderful. It can make you smile or cry or jump for joy or run the other way. It can show up in a dream or a journal or a picture found stuffed in some forgotten drawer. For me it is almost always sudden and hits me square in the face like some sort of time traveling hammer. And I am not talking about remember what happened in a book. I am not talking about thinking of a phone number or of someones birthday. I am talking about the past and how it is alway there behind you to force you to remember where you came from.
I had a dream last night. It was weird. It was my past played out in my head. I played the role of me reliving bits and pieces of my past. It was jumbled and skipped around a bit. It started back when I used to live in Illinois. We had a house on the corner back then with a sloping driveway. There was a girl I once new named Erin Manary. I had a crush on her then. We where drawing on my driveway. A giant circle with a V inside of it. A V for victory. Victories Vikings Forever. I dont remember where that started. I did not care about football back then. I think it was just something two kids made up out of boredom. I do remember that back then I thought I had descended from the vikings so maybe that had something to do with it. No matter. After drawing the circled V's we then condensed my brothers that eating wood pulp was good for them. They tried it and then promptly spit it out. Some how we where then in my bedroom. She was climbing to the top bunk of a bunk bed and she slipped. They was a lot of blood and I'm pretty sure there was one of her teeth sticking out threw her lip. She started crying and we both ran to fine my parents. I'm not sure exactly what happened after that because I was suddenly somewhere else in my dream. If memory serves she ended up running back across the street to her own mom and the probably to the hospital. In real life after that time pasted and I moved away. I move many times when I was a kid. We kept in touch for a long while by writing letters back in forth. Then one day she just stopped writing. I often wonder what happened. I hope it was nothing bad. But back to my dream. From the tooth incident my mind took me back to Texas. This time however the dream seemed more like a series of pictures. There was the house on the old airforce base that used to be an alternate landing site for the shuttle. Or so i was told. The big field behind it. The abandoned golf course with the random VW Bug stashed in the middle of a field. There was Sonya and Mike and Katie. Some of the best friends I have ever had. I still talk to Sonya. Then there was spiders in the shed and some guy setting his leg on fire by stomping a flaming cup full of alcohol. And then suddenly I was on the bus in Louisiana heading for ether my house or to school. I was sitting all the way in the back. It was the farthest seat back and on the right side. I was sitting next to some girl that I can remember her name. I do remember that we sat there almost every day. And also that she used to get me to put my arm around her and she would lean on me or fall asleep on me. For the life of me that is almost all i can remember about her. I know she was pretty and and that we used to sit there and I think I remember me asking her out once but she said no. I have no idea what her name was or how we met or what happened to 'us'. I say us, but there was not really an 'us'. It was just some weird sort of friendship. And then again suddenly I was taken somewhere else. This time it was to Kentucky. I was in school and at the english class I failed to many times. I wish i would have done my homework more often and payed attention. It wasn't like i couldn't do it. When i finally passed the class I ended up with a 98%. I just didnt do it. Anyways I was now in class. I was sitting next to a my friend Leslie and behind my was my girlfriend and future wife anf ex-wife Jessica. Jessica and I where writing back in forth in my notebook about something. Leslie handed me a folded up foil gum wrapper. She had written a note on it that said "This is the best thing you will ever get!" and she signed it. After I read it I looked back at Jessica (to say something maybe?) and she handed me a note of her own. On she had written a quote. "Poetry is nothing less than the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter the truth. -Mathew Arnold." On a side note my dream was not actually that accurate. Leslies's note was but the one I saw in my head from Jessica only said "Poetry is nothing less than the most perfect speech of man". I had to dig into my drawers of letters to remember exactly what it said. And yes I keep my memories around. I think everyone should. Even the bad ones. After Jessica passed my the note we where suddenly in her room. She was handing a collage she had made that said "robot love". I think it had something to do with Red Dwarf. And yes I still have that as well. And then I was reading a card she got me. Well I said reading when really the only thing I remember seeing from the card in my dream where the words "Forever yours". Things can change though. I won't go into the story about tha because those who know me probably already know the story. From her bedroom I was taken to my car. It was just me this time and I was on the road. I was heading towards Dupont, Wa to see Brittney as far as I could tell. But for some reason the roads reminded me of the drive down to Portland, Oregon. I am pretty sure I was almost to her house when I woke up. The alarm on my phone was going off. Thats when I wrote this. I am just posting it now though. As I said above memories are a strange thing. As are dreams filled with memories. I could probably sit for hours trying to decide what that dream means. But I won't. I will just leave it here in this journal and go on. These days I seemed to have adapted the just go with it way of life. I try not to fight anything off with sticks anymore or to hide from things. I take life as it comes and react to then and there. I do use my past as everyone should to learn from. And to also remember where I came from. But I do not let it overtly dictate the way my life goes in the present. As for my future? I worry a little. About all sorts of possibilities. But the way I see it. The future is going to happen weather or not i worry about it. So i try not to think about it all the time. It kind of like dieing. Its going to happen someday. The point is to just make it worth the effort right? Dieing sucks on almost every point of view but it still happens to us all. What matter is what we did before we died. The afterlife will work itself out. (or the lack of afterlife) It does not need us to happen.
I guess I should sleep now. I've gone way past when i intended to go to sleep. If you guys actually read this I will be impressed. I think I wrote this more for me then everyone else.
As a side note I pose a question. Would you tell a person something if you knew nothing would change. I mean you and in a place. And that person is in a place. And you both are happy with that. And tell someone this will not change anything as far as you know. But your mind still thinks about this thing. Would you still tell the person if it would makes things weird or maybe even end a friendship? Would you still tell the person if he/she was your ex? If it had to do with love would you speak? If it had to do with the past? If you where wrong and it could change the future for better or worse would you speak?
Your not supposed to understand where that question comes from. Is just a situation that pops into my head sometimes.
-roguemind 
