Why Latentprints

I lost it.  I did.  Somewhere between there and here or then and now, I lost it.  I didn’t even know it.   But I’m not alone, I think.  We’ve all lost it.  We may not realize it’s gone.  We didn’t see it leave.  Or did it leave?  I think more correctly…we left it.  Frankly, I didn’t know I even had it.  But now that I know, I miss it.  And I want it back.

This then is a mission.  It is my attempt to reclaim what once was but now is not.  Some how, some way all the youthful exuberance, the daring do, the unconquerable, indomitable spirit that used to chase us down and spur us on to do what couldn’t be done,  is missing … or hidden … or lost.  It is more than a mission.  It is a quest.

Every place I’ve been,  everything  I’ve seen,  every person to whom I’ve  talked,  touched,  looked at or thought about…every possible interaction I have had with every possible thing I have encountered, real or imagined, all of it, has both been impacted by me and had an impact upon me. 

They are my clues. 

Some are very evident.  They bear my name.  They carry my remembrance.  They greet me or I greet them.  They are here and now or at least present in my recent past.  They are the finger and foot prints left behind that bear witness in no uncertain terms that I have passed this way like a ripple in the water that once announced the arrival of something upon its plane.  They blaze the trail backward and serve as a road-map to longer remembrances,  more youthful indulgences, more obscure but equally important interactions.  They lead to those events that are not known by any obvious evidence of my arrival or departure and, except to the knowing eye, there may be no evidence that I had ever passed their way. 

There are, upon examination however, tell-tale signs.  Minuscule impressions, unseen by the naked heart,  yet there anyway suggesting,  then confirming, my presence at some point.  

It is these for which I search.  It is these that guide me upon my quest to rediscover the life I’ve led, the people I’ve impacted  and those who have impacted me.  They are the Latent Prints of my life and fuel the musings of a mind that wanders.