PureLandMountain.com: back porch

ON THE MIND'S BACK PORCH

Some evenings, when the time and the weather are right, I love to go out on the deck, have a glass or two of wine and sit on my mind's back porch (it's a fine porch, by the time you reach my age) watch the broad sky unfold its right-now tapestries and let memories play on that high blue screen...

It's always surprising, what's showing there in spontaneity, the many things in my past that I bookmarked subconsciously in their moments – faces and events, places and emotions that turned out to be more important or magical than they then seemed - aspects I hadn't thought I noticed or remembered, even thought much of, at the time; but now that I relive them, how impressive, surprising and refreshing they are-- and how unknowingly observant I was being, even in the darkest times.

Likely because in those swift currents I hadn't sufficient experience to perceive what some of those feelings and moments fully meant to me, so I stored them away for later. But now that I have time's gift of experience, as well as the leisure in which to ponder and treasure - and sometimes regret – these distillations of a life and times, I am nourished as much by my failures as by my successes.

I suppose that is one of the many functions of the past, after all: to brighten the sky with all the treasures of a lifetime, some far evenings on the mind's back porch.