Memories and Other Tricks Your Mind Plays On You

My mind has always had a propensity for abbreviating distances. I will recall one landmark and, in my mind, place it almost directly next to another landmark on the path I am taking but often they are several miles apart. I realized I had done this when I first wrote about the old cemetary on the Cape where my grandmother, aunt, great-grandfather, and several cousins are buried. My mind had placed the cemetary and my elderly cousin's former house almost next door to one another when there is quite a fair space between the two. Although the old cemetary is within the narrowest part of the Cape you cannot see the marsh that used to be an inlet from the cemetary. However, if you continue down the Cape to the aforementioned house, the inlet now salt marsh is almost directly across the street. Because the two are so closely related to one another in my thoughts my mind decided to give them an apparent physical proximity as well. This tendency has, on occasion, made for some interesting road trips and/or directions given to other people (to whom I apologize profusely!). This is only one of a vast repetoire of tricks and misdirections my mind has played repeatedly on me. You will notice, I am sure, that I have endowed my mind with a life and conscience seperate and distinct from the "real me" and that is quite deliberate. I find it preferable to having to face the fact that I am becoming a dottier old so and so with each passing decade (I just couldn't write the word "year" in there) despite my best efforts to prevent the encroachment of my becoming a "character" as I age.

Another little thing my mind does, although much milder than the first trick, is to waft a memory into my consciousness in such a way it is as if I am remembering a dream or ghost of some kind. It feels as if what I am recalling can not possibly exist in corporeal reality even though I am certain it does. It may be because the last time I drove past a particular place was at night or in odd weather or, perhaps, because I was so busy paying attention to something else, I only received a brief glimpse, a fleeting impression, of whatever it was that seems like some sort of mind ghost now, as I passed the place. This happened to me today as I arrived on the lower part of the Cape, just below Orleans. A vague memory resurfaced of a house I used to drive past whenever I went from Wellfleet toward Provincetown. I am sure if I had gone further down the mid-Cape highway today, I would have seen that very same house, perched by the side of the highway, standing where it has been for perhaps the past hundred years, or so. But my mind breathed the memory of it back to me cloaked in the veil of a distant, misty dream and that left me shaking my head in order to clear the overly vigorous growth of cobwebs that occur at such times.

Today was also the day of my high school 30th reunion party. It was wonderful seeing so many of my former classmates again. For me the reality of the party was very much as I had hoped it would be, so I have no disappointments to report. It seems that a full heart can be just full enough to make for a very good sort of evening without too much maudlin reminiscence or overt sentimentality. So much was right about tonight for me I cannot think of one critical comment to make just to give a patina of reality to the event. I hope our 40th reunion is even better.