I don't know what to say about this, only that I first heard it years ago on a Sunday evening Kiawah Island bike ride, while listening to a weekly PBS radio show about Celtic music. I knew at that first hearing of this song that it would haunt me, but couldn't imagine back then how, or why, or along what path it would find its way back into my Sunday night.
I did dream about Kiawah again last night and this time am having trouble shaking free. Like so many of my ideas, thoughts and feelings, maybe posting it here will make some sense of it all.
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One of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry, writes about how difficult it is to remember the past exactly as it was. We are unable to remember it as it was. To know it we have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. But the life that we remember stays with us. Our memories of it, remembered now can only be viewed in the present moment.
"When we remember our past, we are not remembering it as it was. We are remembering it as it is. Like a vision or a dream, it is present with us in the present, alive with us in the only time we are alive."
"Our lives as we have lived them have a shape, and the shape of it includes the past. The absent and the dead are in it. And the living are in it."
The shape of our lives includes memories of everywhere our lives intersected long ago with others. Time and distance have made us to feel absent from one another, but now as we are older our long term memory reaches back to remember our own past life, loved ones and special friends, who upon remembrance join us in the present moment and add meaning to our lives.
We have to do a lot of sorting to discover what is real and what is a figment of our imagination.
I have an absent brother, lost to pancreatic cancer 20 years ago yesterday. But my love for him has grown steadily so that in this present moment his absence is filling a big part of the shape of my life. I remember him not as he was, but as he is. And that is a good thing.
Sometimes I think we try to crowd too much into the present moment. The tyranny of the urgent oftentimes crowds out what is most important.
Here's to some sweet memories of Kiawah Island.
Thanks for that Roger. I was hoping someone would "get" this post, not surprised at all it was you. Recurring dreams are rare for me, but recurring dreams of Kiawah are with me for what seems like all of my days (or nights to be precise). I thought at the time it was happening that it was special, special beyond anything I had ever known. Looking east at her now, I know she is special and I know that time and place is alive and well, not only in me, but in my two daughters and their mother; we all carry Kiawah with us, every waking and sleeping moment, just a thought away for all of us.
A
Daddy, may I suggest a song by Miranda Lambert "The House That Built Me" this song may also explain this feeling, I know
it does for me with Kiawah, it also may bring back a Detroit childhood feeling for you...the lyrics are amazing.
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