Memories.

I was going to discuss all this supernatural business with Oscar then I thought sod it. Why waste a profound intellectual topic on him. He would only sneer and make ribald comments.

And besides ghosts don’t exist. Not that I can prove it mind. That’s just my opinion. But I must admit it does seem strange that we spend our lives developing our wonderful complex selves just so the lights go out and we get plunged into darkness forever.  Or wander around in limbo like lost souls.

What we do get is a lot of memories. Maybe that’s what ghosts are. Our memories and other people’s memories of us. They don’t wear bedsheets and walk through walls but they know how to haunt.

I’ve been reading Marcel Proust. Don’t laugh. There’s not a lot to do here on Oscar’s place and I found a copy of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ in his library. Oscar has an eclectic connection of books. Everything from Goethe to Terry Southern, Dante to Bukowski (signed first editions).

There was a time when the supply of days seemed inexhaustible. Now I can count the time I have left  Ten years if I’m lucky. Decades pass like weeks. Memories. Pleasant ones, nasty ones, they never leave us alone do they? Some are in clear focus others get mixed up and embellished. Some are major events others are just occurrences. Too  many of the damn things. Listing them is pointless. Only one thing is certain….time passes.

Air raid wardens sipping tea in the kitchen (lino on the floor), watching black and white TV by a coal fire, smoking Woodbines behind the bike-shed, snogging in the cinema (trying to get a bra off), Butlins Skegness, Soho Square, sleeping on Brighton beach, hitch-hiking in France, Athens, the Plaka, Sultan Ahmet mosque…..first puff on a Jhelum,  Indian trains, Notting Hill Gate,  helping Syd Barrett cross the road, Indica, watching John Lennon climb that fateful ladder, eating  rice & beans in Speightstown, watching Fred Astaire dance….

Memories flit past, blurred, vivid, fragments of conversation, lines from songs… Some are more memorable than others and sometimes the old memory just needs a nudge and they come flooding back.   …..Just as, on a more mundane level, one remembers certain bowel movements and particular copulations. 

A word of caution when dealing with memories. Sometimes you can disturb a nest of bad ones. They come swarming out at you…guilt, shame, regrets…. and don’t get me started on remorse.

Best get back to reality. I am on a private island in BVI getting ready to go on a half-arsed treasure hunt and Lemmy just croaked.