"Researching" for writing

This is not the time for this. This is not the time. When is it ever the time to be shoved back into the person you were: you mumble an apology (you don't recognize them) and you can't quite look them in the eye because you're ashamed of who you were and ashamed of who you've become. Curse you, brain! Don't do this to me!

I was taking a stroll down memory lane, when I fell down the rabbit hole of recollection, and I'm no longer entirely here (but neither am I entirely--or at all--back there). I was reading through my notes (not scrupulously kept) of my travels, in the name of "research." I needed the scribbles to jog my memory of that odd month in Paris, when I was an impressionable and unripe 18.

I called back the memories because I needed them, but it was too much like waking the dead, or disturbing the dust of many still years. The past now populates my present: I watch the flurries of dust and unwanted ghosts swirl before my watering eyes, of people and conversations and moments I've forgotten (that I needed to forget).

It'll be worth it, though, right? To have something to write about, to talk about, to think or not think about.

First Paris post tomorrow night!