Je me Souviens
I know it is the motto for Quebec on the license plates. I remember --what? That although I am confederated into Canada, I am French and I speak French and my people originally came from France
I guess that is what they are reminding themselves not to forget.
Why do I also feel that could be my motto?
I am blessed by memory. It has sometimes been the source of sorrow as some old woe would sweep over me as if it had just happened.
So I sometimes think that it is a mixed blessing because it makes me so vulnerable and so at the mercy of a sudden onslaught from my past.
One of the reasons that I was happy when young to leave the Bucket was that I felt assaulted at every corner by my past childhood memories. I see that this blog has been a way to bring those skeletons out of the closet of repression and make them dance in the light of acceptance. I have felt the relief of this.
Now that I live with a brilliant man who for the past twelve years has been losing his memory, I see again that loss of memory is loss of self and history. Even if memory brings back bad news, it is a great blessing. It is a constant prop of human identity.
As a Celt I belong to a nation that has made a fetish of memory. I know that sometimes I enjoy it to the point of self-indulgence.
I guess that is why I have come to love the Burren mysteries of Cora Harrison that seem to remind and educate the readers that we had a better system as Celts than the English imposed upon us.
Also in looking into my own genealogy I see that even the YANKEE side--the Jenckes side --were originally Celts. After all Jenckes is a Welsh name and the Whipples from Scotland are intermarried and great-grandmothers of mine and the Mowry's are Huguenots from France. The Colemans are a sub-clan of the O'Neill's and were their hereditary bards. Their role was to celebrate the clans' triumphs in verse and song. Surely I find myself doing this here and in my poems as well. So long live memory.
Je me souvien--Yes, I am doing my job.
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