I love living my memories

nepalnamcha.com२०७८ मंसिर २६

Ashok Silwal

In these months, when the Covid pandemic is still on the lookout,
Constraining us to enforced inactivity and lazy indolence,
Sometimes, nostalgia for the past emerges powerful …

But it is not the feeling I like to associate with my memories.
I prefer to tie them to sweetness and tenderness inside my heart,
To affection and understanding in caressing pastel shades.
Also because and fortunately…. time is selective:
Bad memories are the first that disappear;
And they have already turned into experience,
More useful than comforting or soft heartening.

I love living my memories:
The glances of fatherly authority,
The loving tenderness of mother’s hand,
The smell and flavors of home,
Laughters and tears with sisters and brothers, complicity and quarrels,
Games, studies, celebrations, landscapes, songs and dances….
Each with their own personal memories,
Belonging to the secrets of everyone’s heart..

As a springboard for today and for tomorrow,
As the humus of my growths, regardless of years.
Thousands of moments, not to be named one by one,
Sometimes sweet, sometimes shameless.
As a gear that makes me move forward.

I want to feel them as an engine for my aims and for my dreams.
Sometimes, the colors are a little washed out,
But I don’t see them in black and white.
Memories have to be alive, to run in my eyes,
To dance in my heart in colors, smells, voices, sounds, gestures….
Unrepeatable atmospheres, indelible emotions;
Not just deposited in a drawer because there they fall into oblivion.
Instead, with me…….in the thoughts and feelings of my daily life.
They have to send me lots of encouraging smiles,
Even with a little tear……

They are strong and well-rooted,
To which to anchor the next choices,
On which to support the next steps.
Because they are also lessons, heaps of not-erased experiences.

They are more than simple pieces of life;
They are removed from the domain of time:
‘Precious splinters of our identity’ N.Mandela said;
Timeless treasures of my heart….
Pushing me towards tomorrow.