A pillar of salt

We don’t know, er, a lot about Lot’s wife, not even her name. All we know is that she disobeyed a divine instruction not to look back. Or, expressed positively, to forget everything.

Fully blown

How will I be remembered? What’s my legacy? These are minstrel musings, an ego-generated mental entertainment. The under-appreciated and extravagantly named Victorian poet Coventry Patmore had a different kind of question: “Shall I, a gnat which dances in Thy ray, Dare to be reverent?”

Mr. Nobody

Where there are memories, there is a person. Where there are no memories, there is no person. Perhaps because most of life is unremembered, memories are described as precious and irreplaceable. We escape burning buildings clutching old photographs, artifactual evidence that we exist. There are numberless black and white images in circulation, floating around in flea markets and other places, even lying on the ground. We look at them, faded and curled, and wonder: Who are those people? According to every cultural convention, a person is a bundle of particulars, a medley of distinguishing characteristics which, if we are among the blessed, will be curated at some later date for an obituary. Now tell me, is this beginning to feel like a rabbit hole? What if we are not persons at all? What if we are nobody in particular?

Monogrammatic

My name is a small, battered valise. I carry my attachments in it.

Beauty marks

As we continue our journey into the Self, we discover that some of our memories have left a scar. The man who was beaten as a boy does not, cannot forget what happened. The inner journey is the path of self-acceptance. Scars and all.