in memory, you're still alive, 
 and I'm still young, and we're still free; 
 in recollections deep and high, 
 there's still a you to be with me 

along the shore, beside the sea, 
 it's not a veil, it's verity -- 
 there's summer actuality, 
 in memory, in memory

The photo affixed to the top of this post is upside down. It gives it an odd, unsettling quality, I think.

It took me a minute to figure out what was wrong with it. I flipped the photo, and it suddenly just looks like an ordinary photo. But I show it here the way the photographer intended.

Much of what we present to the world or are presented with, daily, is upside down. We may realize that something seems off with it, but can’t put our finger on what it is.

I think this sort of “upside-downness” characterizes most of my own memories. That’s because a bare recording of the facts or events changes almost completely when perspective is skewed, and mine pretty much always was, and is.

I realize, looking back, that my ability to understand why other people behaved as they did was severely limited at the time, and is scarcely better now. I might think today, that my parents did things with us like take us to the beach because they loved us. At the time, I just thought, “well, this is a things that’s happening” — if I thought anything at all.

The fact that memories are upside down doesn’t make them inaccurate. It just means others need to take care in using them, because they may not be what they appear at first.