Memory

"What was memory after all, but the recording of a number of possibilities which had never been fulfilled?" D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, 91.

Ah...when you need real answers turn to literature. How beautiful is this quote? Sometimes, I forget why I studied literature initially, and then I read something like this. Of course it's a bittersweet moment....a loss so to speak. Literature has become a balm for me. I look forward at the end of the spring semester to reading literature throughout the summer. I feel safe wrapped in those kind of words. Of course it is an odd safety. Literature with its rich words, and jeweled stories does not keep one safe from hurt, loss, but it opens those doors in such a gorgeous way.

So I'm reading The Rainbow, and right after I wrote my post about gaps, I find this quote. How fateful? I love how all of Lawrence's novel are so present. There is an immediacy to the events and to the characters. Those who live in the embrace of the past are dead to life. In order to be alive, really alive, one must be constantly in the now. And this idea that memories are but the regrets of the past. Why live in such a dead place? Lawrence asks this is each novel. Passion, life, and love destroy us but they destroy us in ways that make us more alive.

Ahh...Lawrence....