Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The March of Time

Memories are but pages of the book of life, to be turned occasionally, through the passage of time.

This week has been somewhat of a memory week for me and strangely enough, a very noticeable trend, as I wandered throughout the internet. I think it may have first started when I read a blog written by an online friend of mine. In his story he wrote about his running in 3 marathons and how he trained for those events. That put me in mind of when I was a lot younger and I did similar things. ~

My distance in athletics was the mile 1500 metres & the 5,000m although I did run the occasional 10,000. I remember when I started competitive running, it was in the days of Roger Bannister before he broke the 4 minute mile. The world record for the mile at that time was 4 mins 04 secs.
When I was in the army and running my first mile on the track, I couldn’t understand why the officer in charge was getting so excited, I found out later that I finished in a respectable 4 mins 21 secs. ~ Shortly afterwards, May 6 1954, Roger Bannister was the first man to break the 4 min barrier for the very first time. ~ A huge achievement in those days. ~

As we were out driving to a more distant mall recently, our journey took us through some areas that I had not seen in many years.
~ What used to be a vast expanse of green has been turned into an ever expanding concrete jungle, spreading like a disease across the face of what was once a beautiful landscape. ~ The memories start to turn just like the pages in a book.

I remembered friends I used to socialize with, dear people who had became very close to my heart and even a few that broke it. I thought of the good times and of course there had to be a few not so good. Out of that came some of my poetry writing. Gone now are the dancing days and party times, the invites to dinner and good conversation.

There were moments in my thoughts when I caught my breath, as coming back to reality, I remembered that most all of those beautiful people were no longer alive now.
~ Ah such sweet dreams of days of yore.~

Of course then that brought to mind just how many years had slipped on by, and hell I must be getting older!

C’ya

6 comments:

Leon said...

Eric - Great post. I'm glad is anything I've written helped bring back memories.

- Leon :-)

DarkWing said...

It's weird how things can change when you're not around.

I never was a runner. I was the one standing on the side with a jealous look on my face.

Eric Valentine said...

Thank you Leon, I was just glad of your assistence my friend. Thank you for your visits. :)

Eric

Eric Valentine said...

Yes Newnorth, time marches on they say ~ They call it progress I believe. :)

Thank you too for your visit. :)

I was always a runner NN, even as a kid in school, so many moons ago! LOL

Augs Casa said...

Mate,

I can not tell you how much I come across the growing of a new sub-division. I live well south of the city where there is plenty of corn fields. I almost have to say that over 60% of those corn fields are gone to modernezation. It also makes me sad as my wife is from Mesa, AZ, that the amount of desert when I first was there over 15 years ago is gone now due to new colonies. It's a real shame.

I really enjoyed the read and how you were once a runner. I'm sure you ran like a true champion.

Cheers

Eric Valentine said...

Hi Augs, talking about developers, I wonder whatever happened to "onward & upwards!" you have to hate urban sprawl, & yes that's a pity about where you live too. :(

I don't know about a champion, I got a few athletic medals though. :)