Entanglement

People and places and events with which I have been deeply entangled never quite leave.   This isn't about not having let go, or about turning the page when I should.  It is instead about how the psyche functions, how it creates.

  When we are deeply involved, or lived somewhere a long time, the mind forms an internal representation.   This image isn't only imagination, but comes to have its own function, its own reality, its own substance, separate from the original model.   

Like this - In a dream there comes a house where I lived while in college.  That place, that time was the turning point of my life.  Profound transition from mixed-up and terrified to skilled, smart and with a future.  Even if I saw that house had been torn down, in my psyche it would still be intact.  It is, and always will be, the house of hope, of becoming.  When it comes into my dreams now it has content that tells me where I am going.   

There is a church in my childhood that is like this.  It doesn't matter what sits on that corner now, it will always be the place of miracles.  The place of faith, of old people praying from certainty..    

I wonder sometimes if the house on Louisiana Street, or the new  building that sits where the church once sat, are haunted.  I wonder if when I dream, when the spirits of these places visit me, if I can be seen ghost-like in a hallway, or folding clothes in the back bedroom.  If the old church gains substance; if someone crossing the park nearby would hear my mother singing.  

 What I do know is this - some of these places function almost as if they have life of their own.  As if they became spiritual allies with substance. 
More than memory.  More than image.  

So, I do not worry that places I loved change.  Or people leave, because something is still here.   I am not diminished.    I grieve, yes, but no more than that.

I am glad I still hold the living reality of the little church, the house on Louisiana Street.   And, yes, I think I can hear my mother's voice.