Three Scrambled Realities

"You can close your eyes to reality

but not to memories."

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Three differing realities surround me.  My senses are bombarded by extreme emotions, actions, and conversations.  One woman is sharing her present life, except everything is a collective hodgepodge of memories.  Another woman is crying, begging to be sitting at a table and inquiring what she had done wrong.  She mournfully shouts, "I am so sorry.  So sorry!"   Still another, dressed in a short hospital gown with legs splayed, pleasures herself.  With an open heart, I am bombarded by the realities of these three elderly women.  They are physically in the same time zone, but their distorted realities are anywhere, but the present.  

Mark Nepo, who I greatly admire, asks us to live in the moment, letting go of the past and thoughts of the future.  I observe these ladies and speculate what their immediate moment might be.  The first woman doesn't seem to be able to recognize the present moment and so she fills it with random pieces of her past.  Her present moment will not support her as it is too lonely.  The second woman is begging for acceptance and forgiveness, but the catalyst seems to originate years in the past.  Her present is stuck in an earlier event of shame and criticism.  And the last woman, her masturbation surely soothes her beyond the present.

David Whyte implies our memories are like waves always washing over us.  He says they are an important part of us, enriches us.  Yet, the waves washing over the non-stop verbiage of the first woman does not seem to be enhancing her at all.  Confused, she is doubtful of others motives and paranoid of the strangers around her.  (I am one of those unidentified strangers, as she no longer remembers me.)  The women needing forgiveness is definitely experiencing waves of memories, but hers are not pleasant either.  The last woman, of course, is still humming to her heart's delight and I have no way of knowing if she is reliving a sexual memory or creating a new reality for herself.

To remain in this entangled wrinkle of time, I ground myself for a short reprieve.  My senses, however, are only assaulted more strongly by sounds carried down the long hallway, with more women entering the sad and darkened room.  The volume is on high while the television broadcasts THE GOLDEN GIRLS.  This seems inappropriate creating a contrast so great, my visit is forced to come to an end.  

I walk slowly to my car both disheartened and discouraged.  The haunting eyes and hollow bodies seem to be following me.  I gently close my eyes, only to find waves of these three scrambled realities washing over me.