Always On My Mind

While sorting through my horde (hoard?) of old pictures I found myself assailed by some stinging pangs of regret, especially as I lingered over photos of my married life -- pictures of my two former wives -- images from my first marriage of fourteen years and the second one of twenty years.

The regret stemmed for my recollection of the many thoughtless and undeserved hurts I so cruelly and unnecessarily inflicted on those two fine ladies. I think of those times often. And the older I get the more intense become the feelings.

Elvis sang of such remorse . . .

Sigh . . .

I take notes . . . constantly. Not all of them result in fruitful action but occasionally a thought will strike a particularly emotional note and I compose (sketchily in my mind) a description of what happened or at least what I think happened back then.

And that has stimulated me to consider writing a kind of 'Memoir' (But not a 'traditional' one fer God's sake) and I think I'll do so, at least I intend to work up a list of remembered events from the early years, even if merely an 'idea-skeleton' to be fleshed out later.

One real problem while doing this will be to maintain honesty as much as possible. Whenever I have in the past tried to depict a factual event there was always the tendency to prevaricate and to exaggerate or 'whitewash' actual actions of the people (especially myself) that are being remembered.

Prevaricate?

I have always thought that prevaricate means to tell a lie. But prevaricate does not mean merely 'to blatantly present an untruth.

According to one dictionary prevaricate means. "To stray from or evade the truth; equivocate."

Another dictionary defines prevaricate as: "To speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression."

And the definition of quintessential is, "the perfect example of..."

To make an unfamiliar English word one's own, one should use the unfamiliar word or words in a newly composed meaningful sentence. Therefore:

"The quintessential product of the conventional memoir is boredom and the quintessential ingredient of boredom is prevarication."

The paying market for an honestly rendered memoir is probably quite small. There are always writing contests, though. And personal website journals. And blogs.

Sigh . . .