Memory does not always guard the tranquility of the inner mind; in fact, it sometimes inadvertently, and perhaps subconsciously, plucks the untouchable strings of a vulnerable heart. Memories with someone temporal however unforgetting are like moments in a flowering period: they blossom for a short time and wither away; and what is left behind is lingering charm that nonchalantly smothers ones with chasms of carrot and stick. 

 

My memory of her hits me perennially - she is one of the wittest, sweetest friends who is like a sister bound not by blood but by the threads of dreams and whispered secrets; and with confirmed conviction, I was never in doubt how this could not be charming that presented itself as daily joy. But like any other common plots after graduation, life twisted our paths until they diverged in silence. The last time we met was on a bus back home a decade ago. It was an encounter that turned out to be an awkward episode of melancholy.  As time had woven a veil of distance, on a whim I found myself losing the utmost ability to articulate an utterance and was in the very act of forbidding myself to letting go of the air between us. But insofar as I succeeded in checking the expressions and phrases that I meticulously threw, it struck me painfully to see in her face how much more she unreservedly disengaged herself from the threadbed conversation. We once could talk endlessly and now were reduced to a monologue that lasted at most five minutes, abruptly concluding as she disembarked a stop before her home. I scarcely knew how to put my thoughts into words that shall be a credible picture of what had been through between us, because I could not give any intelligible account of how we might come to this end. My self-defense here was a certain ingenuity of evasion: I was too dazzled by the halcyon days without realising the changes on one side and the days had become halcyon, when the unsolved, shrouded conflicts accumulated seemed nothing to call even an infinitesimal history. 

 

Dreams might not be stored in memory, but memory does slip into dreams, sometimes even very cunningly. In the dream, I met her again, who reached out to me, with her eyes filled with a softness like before, and conversed like before. For a moment, the heartache I long bore dissolved, and rather was replaced by a fleeting warmth that suggested a rekindling of what was lost. Yet, parts of my consciousness alerted me of the ephemerality of a dream, in particular a beautiful illusion deriving from my longing for re-connection. The dawn would come, as it always does, to return me to the haunting facets of reality. I then woke, and heaved a sigh of grief. For a while, she never loomed in view again. 

 

This is not only a dream but a dream, which evolves from memories and extends memories. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang that I still found myself ensnared by all these attachments and unable to release the burdens they impose. As these memories resided in my heart, thoughts of impermanence perpetually arose from a longing, resentment for what once was: they became one of my dreams in void. 
 

The last meeting theory goes, ‘Once you and someone you were connected to have completed the lessons you needed from each other, the universe ensures that you will never meet again.’ Perhaps our paths were never meant to intertwine again, and perhaps that is the lesson time gently imparts. In the quiet of my heart, I accept that all things have their season and meetings are never destined. But if I grasp the chance, I will give you a bouquet of white lilies. 

 

花は咲き   やがて散る

逢瀬もまた  無の如し

 

一切有為の法は、

夢幻泡影の如く、

露の如く亦電の如し、

まさに是のごとき観を作すべし。