No I haven’t watched “Memento” (IMDb entry)(official site) yet… and if you haven’t either, forget what I just said. Because of “The Matrix” (IMDb entry)(official site), me and my friends have had an obsession with Australian actors: Guy Pearce from the aformentioned movie, Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from “The Matrix” and Elrond Half-Elven from “The Lord of the Rings” (IMDb entry)(official site)), Russell Crowe. But this isn’t really what I wanted to say.

The idea resonated with me…. A man condemned to live only with his memories, unable to hold the present in his mind for very long. Which makes me laugh about my seeming obsession with Berkeley (I went back on Saturday and on Sunday, futiley trying to recover something I’ve lost, though I don’t know what it is…) Which reminds me that everything has to change, even me, even though all I have are my memories, and the future is foggier than Daly City on almost any evening.

But I’m still going home in a couple of weeks… or at least back to the physical location which was home at one point… and I still wonder if there’s a term for that feeling of missing a place that wasn’t really home, even though that’s where you thought your heart could rest for a while, until you realized that everyone you met there is on their way out… (and it’s amazing how far you can go without taking a single step). It’s kind of like homesickness, I guess.

So I feel uprooted and exiled, and, as I drift through my memories, it seems like this particular loneliness is the only feeling I’ve ever known, and the feeling of being Home has never lasted for very long… there’s always somewhere else you’ve got to be… and they keep telling me that the Path I Should Take is long and hard.

And when you’ve started down that Path, it’s impossible to go back. Going back doesn’t ever lead back home… whereever you came from is vanished, vaporized, pfft, just like that. It may look the same, but it’s not, and can you really mourn? Because this is the way the world works, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, everything changes, nothing stays the same, whatever and ever, amen.

Some days I wake up thinking my best days are behind me, and the tragedy is that I didn’t realize it at the time, and how many times have I wished to be able to do things over, knowing what I know now…. But it’s too late, baby, baby, it’s too late, though I really did try to make it….

Carol King haunts my subconscious. When I was a little kid I couldn’t sleep without leaving the radio on. I’m surprised I haven’t become a cheesy lyricist. I guess I’ll just have to settle for being a bad poet. <g>

Maybe it’s just my packrat nature. I just can’t let go of anything, even memories. Until I really, really have to. Maybe it’s time again.