Remembering Places

As years pass we collect and carry with us clutter, physical and emotional; some refer to this as baggage.  Lately I have become particularly sensitive to the presence of memory clutter as I ride down the road in a small town.  Now that I have been in the same small town, in the same neighborhood, for 17 years, the familiarity is almost overwhelming for a person who moved so frequently until 17 years ago.  How I longed for a place to stay.  As I told a friend the other day, every corner and bush has a story.   Some stories are worth sharing, but most are as personal as the clutter left inside a purse when switching to another.

One of my favorite songs by the Beatles is In My Life (aka There Are Places I Remember), written by John Lennon and sung by George Harrison, now deceased.  I was a big fan of the underrated Beatle and remember thinking that the Episcopal Church was surely the church for me when George Harrison  was included in Prayers of the People after his death.  In My Life was of tremendous value to me when I was very young; it has grown to be more valuable over time, but now my left brain threatens to analyze out some of the meaning.  It seems to appreciate memory clutter so long as, through comparison, the greatest meaning in one's life is in the here and now.  I used to clearly get that, but it isn't that easy.  

Now I think that the meaning of one's life is the sum of accumulated experiences, and you cannot say that you love someone more than another.  This endless effort to analyze such things will wear you out, and assuring someone that they are loved the most in my life is downright stupid.  I suppose it is because I now know that love is not a feeling; love is an action, and only the passage of time can determine whether in my life I will have loved someone more than another.  In other words, the jury is always out, and how I will act always remains to be seen....    

Still, while shopping the other day I heard In my Life and hummed along and felt like I was hearing the voice of a dear old friend.  I guess the song and the voice are just entwined in my memory clutter: 

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never ever lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more