Periodically I like to put on Johnny Thunder’s “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory”, a song title taken from a line in an episode of The Honeymooners. The irony is pretty funny to me, and even though the song isn’t my favorite of Thunders, the title is too poetic to not warrant several relistens.

There’s a lot of times I find myself getting lost in a memory. Going through the motions of how everything went down, considering the implications of my actions after the fact, wondering what would have happened if I made a different choice. A lot of times I think about how different my life would be had I just said “this” instead of “that”, if I would’ve sucked it up and said sorry, if I would’ve had the foresight to know how things would end.

But it’s all an exercise in futility. It’s a memory because, for better or worse, it went down that way. And in the deeper metaphysical sense, it was always going to go down that way. We would all be millionaires if we bet on the horse after it won. And because you don’t know how things are going to end, you act in the moment. What’s a memory if not a moment? Or better yet, the feeling of a moment.

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