Memories in light and shadow

Not soon, as late as the approach
of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me
and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former
lives were departing,
like ships, together with
their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens,
the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better
than they were before.
--- Czeslaw Milosz,
Nobel-prizewinning Polish poet,
from his 2001 poem Late Ripeness

My memories are like driving through a fog that has bits of clearing or clarity. Some of my memories are fragile traces, fragments or remembered moments from my past, especially my
childhood memories. Some of my memories are in the shadow, full of gaps. Other memories are vivid, clear and "in the light". I build up and remove layers of paint on my canvas, that
represent the layers of life experiences that accumulate in my mind as memories. I scrape, rub, scratch back into the layers of paint to reveal the meaning of my painting, much like the way we look back through layers of our memories when searching to understand ourselves.