No eternal return here.

"When a moment dies..." There seems to be no question in Pachecho's mind of the possibility of eternal return. There is the moment, and now it is gone. For the life of me, I don't know why this poem is sticking in my mind. I've always loved it, but until recently it's been collecting paper mites in a notebook piled high with more notebooks, keeping good company with other poems that I love and lines and excerpts from novels that I love, mixed with my own much shabbier writings. Once upon a time, when I first stumbled onto it, I read and re-read it, dissecting each line. But I haven't read it in years. Now I feel compelled to read it anew, and I find myself murmuring the lines as I walk along Chartres or Decatur through crowds of tourists and French Quarter Fest aficienados. As if I might gain some new perspective. Or as if there is a message hidden there for me.

"There are faces now I'll never
see in my mind again;
and perhaps there's a mirror, a summer, a street
that already go under the echo of one more futile shade."

We can't even hold onto our memories.

There have been random moments in my life, mostly in my now-long-gone Tracker, when I've said to myself, "I'll never remember this moment." They weren't moments rife with meaning or importance. They weren't moments when something startling or unusual happened. They were just moments when I realized that so many small increments of my life that seemed unimportant or unnoteworthy were gone for good. Those little seconds when nothing is happening. At a stoplight. In a traffic jam. Doing a job. Running an errand. Nothing moments. But then, when you take those away, how much is left? If we only hold onto the truly riveting moments of our life, it's no wonder that we're said to use only minute portions of our mind's capacity. Funny thing to note: I remember those moments when I realized that I would forget them. I mean, I remember sitting at a stop light in Banner Elk, North Carolina, staring at the back of a navy van where a bumper sticker read "My other car is a broom," and thinking, "I'll forget this moment. It's already gone."

The scary part, though, is that many of the important moments are not as clear as I believed they would remain. Maybe I've taken them for granted, and they're fading from neglect. I've tried to revive them, but they're shadows of themselves now. A feeling in my gut that I was sure would last forever is gone. I remember having the feeling, but I no longer have the power to summon it to life. You know what I mean. Think back to your first kiss. For weeks afterwards, your lips tingled at strange times throughout the day and you could will yourself to feel that kiss again. But now, that first kiss is just a marker in your mind, a little, pink Post-It note that says "Insert first kiss here".