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10.25.10

Memory in Blue

Maybe because it's the season; all the witchy supernatural vibrations shimmering in the air around us, that's inspired me recently to get back to my creative writing. The following poem isn't based on any specific, direct UFO or paranormal experience, but after I wrote it, I realized that, aside from it being "just" a poem, there's more behind the words:

Blue Lights

unexpected, blue lights appear
in this isolation, and through
the thin cracks in the rough wood,
glowing mists invite, even while repelling

a cold silence makes itself known, waiting
we hear its breathing

dreams, night walking, forgetfulness
only slivers of mists and light beams remain

jarring realities intrude, mundane violences, abrupt commands
we don't understand, we don't remember
but sense invisible connections anyhow

we believe there'll be a reveal in the retelling, no matter
how fragmented

memory has a sentience all its own.

~ regan lee, october 2010

Photo Credit: Regan Lee

I'm not sure why I was inspired to write this. I've never been in the woods while following lights via cracks in the walls, or seen blue lights that called to me. But this poem is based in a small way on a few stories others have shared with me, as well as my own experience of missing time and sightings.

I didn't consciously think the following: "we believe there'll be a reveal in the retelling, no matter/how fragmented" that just came out, as the whole poem did, really, but realized afterwards that this is exactly what many of us, myself included, hope will happen if we tell our stories. We keep at it because we hope that something, some truth, will fall out and show itself.

And memory: "memory has a sentience all its own." Memory is no longer a "thing," it's over, the event is gone. Yet it lives, and behind that memory, in context of UFO and paranormal, liminal encounters, something else is afoot. Like dreams -- which figure greatly in this context -- memory takes on its own life. Missing time: something happened during those moments we don't consciously remember. How can I be "here," (or there) and yet have no memory at all? Where was I, where was my mind, my spirit, my consciousness? It was somewhere, doing something, I just don't remember. And so, those of us with these experiences, try to grasp some of that missing self through the telling, the sharing, including creative expressions. Look how many contactees, abductees and witnesses are, or became, artists, trying to create -- or recreate -- their experiences, including the parts they don't remember.

Years ago I did have a dream involving UFOs and blue light. It was a frightening dream; and come to think of it, I just realized it did take place in the woods. Maybe some of that dream-memory was lurking on the edges as I was writing the poem.

I dreamt I was running alongside the woods, out of the woods, near a town, or into the town, and behind me, a friend of mine I've known since high school. We're both scared out of our minds, and are trying our best to get away from something. She yells at me to watch out for the "blue light," the one on top of the dome on a UFO. I say, "What blue light," and she tells me the "blue light, the one we both saw" and I become terrified, because I know she's telling the truth, and I remember this light. The light is a powerful image by itself, while just a light, it's attached -- both literally and metaphorically -- to something more, something I don't want to explore. (While this person and I used to be somewhat close, I don't recall us going together to the woods, hiking, camping, etc. and funnily enough, she has avoided me for several years now. That could be due to anything of course, but I've always wondered about that.)

Like missing time, where memory is somewhere, dreams happened to us, yet, vanish. How can it be that we experienced the dream, only to have the details disappear, yet we retain the awareness we did have that dream? We remember what we forget. Meanwhile, the "memory has a sentience all its own."

What's it doing out there?