dusting off time

The other night nikki and i hung out and we were talking about our families and childhoods and how we got into performing. she's been on a big memoir kick recently, writing out things from her past whether with her family or old places and lovers, and she asked if i hadn't tried writing about all my years performing, what got me started playing music and doing poetry and how all my years acting have influenced the full aesthetic i strive for while on stage. and i said yeah i should do this. and started the next day! it's taken me awhile of hemming and hawing to find an angle in on my past, for months now, and suddenly there's pages and pages of experience, certain gigs, teachers, desires acted out... and i'm finding it is not enough just to write about one angle like performing, the past is so intricately interwoven that to write about one thing i have to bring in my social searching, my family, my loves, etc... "as the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough." even if i never publish this, or not till years hence, it is such a worthwhile exercise to dredge up the full contents of my life. i suppose i would have to say all my views on memory in that essay i wrote are wrong. or if not wrong than i was missing the key point that though we can only access our memories from the present and can view them how we will, who we are now is only possible due to the precise nature of what has happened to us, from the big events down to the smallest corner we went around instead of going around another. even if we don't remember these things, and perhaps especially if we don't, because our whole lives of memories are still stored in our bodies and acting out through us everyday, the whole weight of our becoming determining what we do from moment to moment... i suppose that's what they mean by fate. destiny (rilke's destiny) would be learning to take up that body of fate and let it lead us where we want to go and not just at the whims of passing time.