Alive.

You think you will never forget any of this, 

you will remember it always just the way it was. 

But you can't remember it the way it was.

 To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it 

right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. 

Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them

 that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. 

And so you have a life that you are living only now, now

 and now and now, gone before you can speak of it,

 and you must be thankful for living day by day,

 moment by moment, in this presence.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you.

 You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present,

 and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life 

in a different world and time. When you remember the past,

 you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is.

 It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present,

 alive with you in the only time you are alive.

Wendell Berry