gozzterLeave a Comment on Memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more

Memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more

Now that I’m older, it has become obvious that memories are gifts; the less consequential are often the most poorly wrapped, the least disguised. I remember when I was a young child and searching for my presents under the Christmas tree: the forgettable ones were often only thinly disguised in hurriedly-taped coloured paper and usually just socks, or mittens pretending to a magnanimity they would never otherwise possess.

Of course, childhood sees value differently I suspect; it thinks memories are like that: there are no old ones against which to compare; no yardstick to measure them, except perhaps surprise, or fulfilment of hopes from day to day, month to month. It is only with maturity that the realization dawns that the truly valuable ones are sometimes more securely weighted and only float to the surface when the rope previously holding them down frays.

Fragments of memories sometimes emerge from the depths, however: colours and shapes that have had so many decades underwater they may no longer be reliable; only the slightest tingle of emotion grants them initial entry. But brief glimpses of the ceremony to which they were once attached add to their significance. Many of my memories arrive like that nowadays, it seems.

For one of them, however, there is a tangible, and readily available acoustic reminder: it is a bronze puja bell half the size of my head, a Ghanta (the Sanskrit term for a ritual bell used in Hindu religious practices, apparently). I purchased it near a temple in Tamil Nadu in southern India –Kanchipuram, I think- and then eventually hung it at the bottom of the staircase in my current house. Although the ringing of the bell produces what is regarded as an auspicious sound I forget it’s even there when I pass it now; the memories hang by themselves and wait for a simple touch…

I was likely in my 20ies then and travelling to interesting parts of the world after graduating from university. I seldom prepared for the adventures, preferring instead to be surprised. I boarded a bus in India heading south with all the naïveté of youth. And although I had a big fat Lonely Planet guide book to help choose possible destinations, I no idea of the customs I would encounter, nor what surprises the randomly chosen places might offer… I’ve kept the book for all the many intervening years and the moves from university to university, but until the memory surfaced I’d forgotten all about it. It was buried with all its underlinings and smudges in a bookcase downstairs -near the bell in fact… Ah, the memories I’ve stored!

Seeing my Lonely Planet, the bus driver announced that some of his lonely passengers might want to visit the Sacred Mango Tree at the Ekambareshwara Temple… (I underlined it in my guide book). You only need to walk around it a few times (at least three, he said) and then you’ll meet a love for your life, and loneliness will be a thing of the past when you get back home. Being single at the time, I did that of course, but with no immediate results until much later back in Canada when I met someone I eventually married.

But of course, at the time I could only hope. After the journey around the tree, I remember being more distracted by the sound of a bell in the nearby temple. It was dark inside and I think I was only allowed to stand in awe somewhere outside. The tones were mesmerizing and I found myself a solitary prisoner in that spot as I listened. I later went searching for a similar bell, and eventually discovered and bought a rather heavy, but smaller one just like it somewhere in Kanchipuram. I have no memory of carrying it on the rest of my journey; I suppose that’s what youth does though…

Now that I remember the experience however, a question about it has begun to tug on me again just as it did shortly after I returned home and met my wife: did my hopeful circling of the unbelievably ancient and sacred Mango tree actually work?

Coincidences have a habit of reifying themselves, don’t they -even if they only have an evanescent life in a long ago memory… My friends thought it was too magical to be a coincidence though. Why else, they argued, would the practice of walking several times around a tree -even an ancient and sacred one- be so revered? There must be something to it…

Because I was so enamoured with my wife, it felt almost sacrilegious to doubt it. But now, so many many years later, I even wonder how valid my memory of the sacred tree actually was. That was why I dedicated an entire morning to searching for the Lonely Planet book, although I didn’t expect to find it, let alone find pages I had underlined. And it occurred to me to wonder whether the underlining helped or actually created the memories which, unaided, might well have been recalled differently? Especially in light of other, later, memories which were thicker tissues…

My friends still keep reminding me of the old adage about being careful what I wished for, but I don’t think they really understand me. I was careful, and I was very much grateful for wishing and finding a wife. But even special gifts change over time; even memories evolve in unexpected ways; even Love sometimes walks away…

Or maybe Time is a sort of sieve, and what makes it through the mesh is no longer likely to be the same as it was. As the title of this essay suggests: maybe memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more. I have little regret about that: I will not be heard forever either. I can only hope that both the tree that fostered me, and the ground that awaits, will be as kind to me as the Love I found…

None of us should hope for more…

, , , , ,

Leave a Reply

search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close