Do you ever want to go back to a time in your past where you now think you were happier? I have that, but I don’t know if I were happier, that’s such a fleeting concept. I just like to go back to a time where I was more naive than I am now. Before, I regularly was amazed after reading a book or a talk with an interesting stranger, and that still happens, but it’s no longer twice a month but twice a year.

In my personal live I wouldn’t mind going back to the time where I was 19 and just joined the Dutch Marines, where the world opened up to me. Meeting my physical boundaries and crossing the real one by working in totally different cultures around the world. I preferably go back with the knowledge I have now but I guess that will spoil the fun. But still, it would be interesting walking in your own shadow.

The Haiku I found today (Day 802) was only written a couple of day later than the one from yesterday. I don’t know if it is any good in the world of poetry but that’s not why I write them. I write them in an attempt to reshuffle my thought and print out the results on a daily basis, brain exercise.

Going.

Retreating backwards

where the lights once were shining

to the unknown known.

Being nostalgic, every now and than, is something most people don’t escape from. We bring with us memories and where they land on the scale of truthfulness doesn’t matter, they are there and ours. Often you go back to your memories to share them with others or with the people that where there. Or you want to recall a name or place or you go there unwillingly when you see a picture or meet an old friend. But you can also “Retreat(ing) backwards” in a way to escape your current predicaments. All these examples do also count for couples, groups of people or whole countries. And there the retreat backwards can be seen in politics where people praise (“where the lights ones were shining “), lets say, the fifties. The like to think that the people where nice back than, the neighbors white and the lawns trimmed every weekend, and where kids die of polio, gays where prosecuted and asbestos was sawn in the shad for your new roof.

We tend to believe our own memories, even if you have studied the brain, psychology or are just interested in the subject. It is hard to believe that your own memories, most of the time, have little to do with what really happened, specially your ow role in these events. That’s why I call it the “to the unknown known” in the haiku.

We know our past but we also don’t.