killer memories

I am creating far too many memories, far too quickly. The nostalgia that will be triggered when I eventually sit down on some verandah and start reminiscing (should I smoke a pipe to complete the picture?) will be crushing, suffocating. I am scared of memory.

So what to do about it?
Avoid all retrospection? Constantly strive to replace the old memories with new, more glamorous ones? To push those ghostly loves and moments that nip and yap at my soul to the farthest corners of my known universe?

Seems like a (pathetic) temporary fix. For there they lie like dormant volcanoes, waiting to be unleashed by a random whiff of cologne or a tune or the slanted handwriting on a letter that I hold in my trembling fingers. Their potency is undiminished in their incognito stage.

Sometimes when I shut up, I hear them swirl around me, silent hound-like specters. They watch me with big beady eyes from the thick foliage as I bike down the gravel road through the woods in the gathering darkness. Crunch, crunch, creep, creep. They wait patiently for the slightest moment of vulnerability, for the slightest deviation from my purposeful path, to envelop me and cascade gleefully through my whole being. And I will shudder with the painful delight of nostalgia.