on memories

she pointed over to that spot on the cliff - a small platform on the rocky surface, accessible by climbing some narrow steps and walking a tricky path, where someone ages ago had built a sort of fountain countless years ago. she asked me if i had ever been there. no, i said, but i'll take you there one day.

i never did.

but the memory remains - a memory of something i never did. of something that never happened. it's interesting to see how we can create memories of events that never took place, or even of places where we've never been. sounds weird, i know, but it happens. especially when it involves someone else, someone who was somehow special back then. i've never been on that small spot on the cliff, but if eventually i go there, i'll remember her, and how i should have gone there with her - not in the present, but in the past. in a long lost past that is not missed anymore nonetheless.

what about future memories? memories of something that hasn't yet happened? those are tricker, but they happen to - often when we want something to happen so much that we picture it all on our head with coloured crayons. and then we long for what we haven't lived yet. we might not even live it, ever - but in our minds we did, and the picture drawned and painted in that glorious morning will remain. and it will come back to us if we ever get there, and not without a faint feeling of sadness. for what should have happened.