REMEMBERING

There are memories that come to mind when I am about my daily activities, especially when I am driving and my mind wanders. There is an awareness that I am present in this body in this life even as I was present in other bodies in other lives. They are a bit like remembering movies that I’ve seen in the past, though when I was younger my memories of such were much more dramatic, emotional and “personal” to me. I don’t recall or try to recall them or their specific details any more but I have a definite sense that I was “there” just like I was there at my high school graduation or when I received an award in first grade at Roosevelt Public School for my drawing of a sailing ship (which I believe I still possess somewhere hidden in my tomes of things perhaps in the garage). I remember myself getting up proudly, my parents beaming on either side of me, and walking up the aisle and up the stairs to the stage to receive my award certificate. What I refer to as my “past life memories” are much like that, except that they include rather dramatically unpleasant moments as well as some pleasant ones. I am more emotionally detached from these past memories than I used to be. Some of them used to be very painful and sometimes still are. The more recent ones still have some emotional effects on me. 

The most recent is that of a rabbi who, with his eight children, are sent to the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland. His French wife was previous murdered by German soldiers whom she attacked as they tried to rape her, as he thought more of protecting their children than going to her defense, which, of course, would’ve gotten him killed. He felt himself to be a profound coward for not dying to protect her. The Kommandant of the camp did not kill his children in order to retain his willingness to help keep his congregation “under control” rather than rebel. Ultimately every child died of sickness and he was left to face the firing squads of German boys in uniform as the Russians entered Poland. There is much more to this story.

In the other "recent" life, a fourteen-year-old Lakota Sioux boy whose father, Little Fox, and mother have been killed by the US Cavalry, is, with his sixteen-year-old sister, left to defend those remaining alive of his tribe who are fleeing the soldiers. They are attacked, his sister has her jaw broken and is raped by the soldiers. He is captured by the soldiers who laugh at him because he is so small. He escapes his bonds and stabs a soldier in vengeance. As he runs away, he is shot in the back, the bullet passing through his lung. Then his head is put in a noose and his spinal cord is supposed to snap or he is supposed to strangle when dropped. But he is so scrawny and light that he just hangs from the rope and kicks until one of the soldiers grabs his feet and yanks him down.

I know these things happened. There are many more descriptive details. It seems like my imagination running wild but these are not old TV shows I saw as a child. They actually happened to me when I was another person in another time. I remember all sorts of things, and especially liked being in the world before the advent of technology—cars, telephone, engine—when all moved by horse-power, when the horse was personal and had a name, was a friend. I prefer those times when the world was slower and quieter and the main diversions were human—conversation, music, games. I was able to find “success” in this world by being able to sell financial advice and services, which required, in my estimation, one who could demonstrate a care for the client, the customer, as well as satisfactory financial results. I did this before computers came onto the scene and took over as the informational source. But I have always had a kind of awareness that I don’t really belong in this world, even though I was able to just about convince myself that I could be comfortable in it. But not quite.

There's another story from the early 18th century. My sister and I are hiding under a table in a pub full of drunken sailors and not-quite-as-drunk prostitutes, one of whom is our mother. The floor is covered in a matting of damp straw that smells of beer, urine, and vomit. Like the proverbial Dicken's theme, we are ultimately adopted by a well-to-do Anglo-Irish couple and live in a mansion outside of Dublin. At university, I become interested in the "black arts" and drop out to move to the country and be educated by a group of women who are always at risk of being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake by the priests. This lifetime would appear to end in 1728 when Seamus is put into a door-sized hole in the ground, a wooden door is placed upon him, and the priest directs the villeins to throw rocks upon the door to crush him. But he is saved from death, though not quite intact, by one red-haired witch, who literally remembered him 250 years later. There is more to be told of this story as well.

I wish there was a moral to this story and the others, but I find that it’s a story in which myriad other stories converge. I just have to let this be as it is. As one who has paddled and floated down the river of his particular life and who discovers that there are numerous other rivers now converging into a great river flowing into the greater sea, I see that I am now carried by the current. We may call it “forward” but it is simply the direction of the current. Remembering the memories of the long past of one’s lives reveals oneself to oneself as flowing within a current of different times, different places, different people. It instills a perspective that extends beyond time, place, and personal identity. What I feel now, I have felt before. But the beauty is that it is all fresh and new in every single moment that occurs here and now in which there is no past and no future.