Something I wrote in my
blog almost two years ago:

I am also painfully aware that I have live in a narrow band of my life because
I have seemingly forgotten most of what I have ever known or experienced.
I say "seemingly" because on occasions, sometimes in ephiphanic
moments, I have glimpses into my past -- memories of snow crunching underneath
my boots in cold, cold Timmins, of gym classes I hated, of classmates who
have gone to places I know not where. I am an iceberg and only the surface
is apparent to others and to myself.

I regularly return to the metaphor of self as iceberg. In several months, I
turn 37. I often anticipate the future and obviously have no choice but to live
my life moment by moment in the present. As I lose more and more of life to
the past, I become increasingly zealous about accessing my memories. Writing,
I suspect, will be a primary tool in my remembering process.

Let me brainstorm some memories, true or false, and see what this process jogs
in me.

At about 10 pm, as I was returning home in a taxi from Kidd Creek Mines,
after working really late, I looked up and saw colourful splotches of light
in the sky. Things didn't seem right at first. What was that stuff? I then
realized that it was the first time that I ever saw the northern lights (aurora
borealis). I'm surprised that living in Timmins that the aurora borealis isn't
more common. I've not seen it since.

At the end of grade 8, a girl I had a mad crush on was moving to Texas. I
wrote a card and bought her a present and walked several miles through the
"suburbs" of Timmins to say goodbye. On occasion, years later, I'd
wonder what had ever happened to her. I even did a few google searches, though
I never paid for a PI to track her down. But I never found out where she is
now.

When my younger sister, who was 8 years younger than I, was born -- my other
sister and I ran home to see her on her first day out of the hospital. I remember
her lying in her crib. How I wish to remember more about that day.

There was a summer in which 3-d glasses were all the rage. I went out to
buy one of those cheap pairs (with the paper frames and flimsy filters), eagerly
waiting some flick about a gorilla in a zoo. The show was so disappointing.
Not only was the story line lame but the 3d efforts were terrible. Why did
we get so excited?

These days, I like walking by the elementary school in our neighborhood,
peeking in the windows. I like to say proudly that I don't care about my own
surroundings since I'm a man who lives inside my head -- but what is it about
the brightly lit, extremely colorful, rich immersive environment about the
K-6 classroom that calls out to me? I daydream about Queen Elizabeth Public
School, where I attended K-6. There were two floors -- and I'll have to come
back to all the images that are surfacing for me even as I try to transport
myself there: gyms on the north and southside, a big (oak?) tree on one corner
of the yard, cleaning the chalk erasers one afternoon, school buses parked
in a row, walking towards home and then turning back to see the school (now
why did I turn around?), the things I did during recess by myself for many
years, where the principal's office was, distributing valentine's day cards.

The mundane has taken on a magical tinge.