Every now and then I see or do or smell or feel, or simply experience something that makes me think, in the most profound way possible, "wow" and "oh shit, not again" at the same time.

It is when an unspeakable something, or a combination of things - it could be the weight of the air on the back of my head, it could be the supine smells curling in and out of my nostrils, it could be precious fleeting fragments of words snatched out of the rich dark tapestry of a poem I once draped myself in, it could be the shrill petulant yellow of a daffodil or the meek blanched almond of a bruised jasmine - inexplicably makes another something in your soul thrill and strain and let out a rapturous cry of yearning and accord.

Something happens then - something touches the most deeply buried fibres and nerves of your heart that you never knew were sentient; waiting. Lying in obedient abeyance until the one thing, the one thing that would seek out and upon its perfect, pliant mould impress its own image indissolubly and in doing so leave them - you - indelibly altered, comes along.

I love these moments simply because they are sublime. And yet how I abhor them because I know that I have involuntarily stuck this particular yearning, this incredibly textured, multi-faceted yet scrupulously exact constellation of wants and hurts and joys and smells and laughs in my already-messed-up-enough head. And I know that it is for as long as I live waiting somewhere in there, waiting to be resurrected at the most unforeseen, inapropos moment with a prodigious strength and density of emotion that leaves me gutted.

Always you end up gutted - because bad memories (for want of a better word) bash your face in with their associated pain and guilt and embarrassment, while good memories you allow to slowly hollow you out, taunting you with their aching transience and bittersweetness.

Somewhere at the back of my mind I know this stinks of my own complicity.
And that makes me feel even more BLEAAAAARGH.