What's past is prologue

by David Grand
September 2, 2004

Now, I've always felt that turning my life's clock back, however little or far, to be a waste of time and energy for my mind's memory bank. And former major league manager Sparkey Anderson spoke for me in saying, "I've got my faults, but living in the past isn't one of them; there's no future in it."      

I also go along with what two famous satirists- Finley Peter Dunn and Charles E. Wilson-once said: "The past always looks better than it was, and it's only pleasant because it isn't here." "It's futile to talk too much about the past, for that's sort've like trying to make birth control retroactive."      

But since I can't control my mind like it was a computer, and push the "permanently delete" button to erase bad memories, I try to escape from them as best I can by doing something else to occupy my mind. However, it seems like no matter how hard I try to run and hide,  they inevitably succeed in catching up with me. I guess that's because, as Michel de Montaigne said in 1562, "Nothing fixes a thing so intently in the memory as the wish to forget it."

What brought the subject of past memories to my mind was all the notoriety John Kerry's service record in Vietnam is receiving in the media, outshining even the bright spotlights Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson are under. For of all the wars this nation has engaged in, the ghastly memories of that futile and costly war, forever embedded in the nation's conscience, should not be dishonored and soiled by his political foes calling into question his well documented, heroic acts during his two tours there. Too bad that that those conducting that smear campaign against him won't heed the advice given by Sen. John McCain to all Americans; namely, "to get past Vietnam and quit opening the wounds of that war, which I've spent the last 30 years trying to heal."      

To end on a lighter note, I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite quotes about memories:

• "There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted." (James Branch Cabell)
• "There is nothing like an odor to stir memories." (William McFee)      
• "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." (Lewis Carroll)
• "One thing you'll probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget." (Franklin P. Jones)  
• "Memory is what tells a man his wife's birthday was yesterday." (Mario Rocco)
• "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time." (Friedrich Nietzsche)
• "We must always have old memories and young hopes." (Arsene Houssayee)
• "Memory is what makes you wonder what you've forgotten." (Odell Shepard)
• "A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven't." (Irvin S. Cobb)
• "Every man's memory is his private literature." (Aldous Huxley)      

I imagine you'll forget what I wrote in this column as quickly, if not quicker, than I did after I wrote it. But thanks for reading it during the commercials at the convention. Hope you didn't find it more boring that what you were hearing from the podium.