Images of a Life

 

Memory Images

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart—work on the images imprisoned within you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

          What images are imprisoned within you? Images from the past, imaginings of the future? I’ve been thinking about the things Einstein said about time, that it is not linear, that it is a human construct that we invented to help us track our activity. We remember our past mostly in snapshots, in brief encounters, and partial conversations. And even then, if we asked someone else who was also present at the time, their memory would be different. Some of us have home videos from our childhood, and we have stored mental images from stories that our tribe has told us about ourselves and others. But the truth is, our personal history is only captured in images and memory. There is no material way to authenticate it. So, when I ask you the question, what images are imprisoned within you, what is the first one to pop into your mind?

          We modern humans are captives of words—we talk, we write, and we talk some more. We have a 24-hour news cycle that features someone speaking every minute of the day. Sometimes I wonder why that form of communication predominates. We have older, more accurate, and superior senses when it comes to interpreting meaning—observation of body language, facial expression, and simply feeling the energetic vibrations in any given situation. How many times have you walked into a room and felt the tension radiating off the people there? Often, we know what is going on more from what we feel and observe than from the words spoken—because unlike body language, words can bamboozle and obfuscate.

           Stored within our hippocampus, is a lifetime of images and associated memories. We would all be authors of best sellers if we were to tap into that treasure trove instead of focusing outside ourselves. The pop-culture world holds no candle to what is right there inside you—your memories, your dreams, your experiences are the richest jewels in the cave of time. What are those images? And what stories do they tell?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane

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