Remembering to Forget

Tonight I had a reminder about something I tried to forget.

I hate that.

When you put something down it should stay put. How annoying is it when you put something down and someone tidies it away? As my co-workers wil tell you, there’s not a lot that makes me angry more than people moving stuff needlessly.

Anyway, the put-down thing. It was just a glimpse of a reminder, a solitary blue box, but it reminded me of good times and ultimately not-so-good times. The good stuff is still with me tonight as I lay down, keyboard illuminated, to write this blog post. The bad stuff? Well, it’s just baggage. And we should recognise and embrace baggage – it defines us.

I watched “The History Boys” recently. Marred only by it still being a play and not actually turned into a screenplay, I found it interesting, thought-provoking and a little inspiring. The “gobbets” made me wish I’d not spent my degree years cloistered in a laboratory. I have a hankering to go back to university and study something for the sake of study. Philosophy? Being “the love of Wisdom” it would seem to be the ideal choice. That said, I think I really just want to talk about stuff. About how “Men are from Mars….” is really just a rehash of The Naked Ape. And to make bold statements designed to boil the blood, get some heated debate going and then order some more capuccino. Extra marshmallows on mine, please. In the film as presumably in the play, the characters are excessively verbose in their speech which is the benefit of being a character in a play as opposed to real life. We would hope few people speak like that in their day to day dealings. It made me think that it might actually be a crime that I’ve been to Paris as an adult, six or seven times but never been inside the Louvre. I don’t think it makes me a bad person but I feel that next time might be the time. Even just to sweep through the highlights (but which ones? The actual masterpieces? The ones mentioned in The DaVinci Code?).

Man, these words speak to me tonight. Bennet’s play/film was funny, irreverent, used a little too much “taboo” to give it edge and we can debate for hours on whether the use of profanity was ironic or cynical. It’s not a bad show, though and if you decide not to see it, then I can tell you that they all die in the end. So sad. A little like real life, n’est ce pas?

Frost’s poem “The Road Less Travelled By” is very poignant for me for many reasons. Would I be substantially different had I studied arts rather than science? If my family had not moved from the countryside of Fermanagh to the divided town of Lisburn? Should I have zigged rather than zagged? Did I tell the truth too soon or too late? A friend of mine calls this “the If game”.

I’m going to leave you with the immortal words of Van Halen, a great 20th Century philosopher in his seminal work, “Best of Both Worlds”,

I don't know what I've been livin' on, but
It's not enough to fill me up
I need more than just words can say
I need everything this life can give me.

On other news, we’re going to open the source to SyncBridge. Let me hear ya say yay…