I should write here first, before I go to FACEBOOK; Not the other way around....

I've written a lot of pieces about the memories I have of the days gone by; some are glad tidings, like a Christmas card from an old friend. Some are like what they were at their inception, but miniaturized somehow, like a javelin to the heart whittled down to a toothpick to the heart: still hurts to think about, but not as much as it did.

But there is a problem with this memory, as you can well imagine. After awhile it becomes almost overwhelming. Especially since all the chickens have seem to come home to roost at the same time.

It's my own fault, really. And I do my best. But I blame, in part, FACEBOOK.

Evil, evil FACEBOOK.

Okay, not blame. I name FACEBOOK as a catalyst.

All the old faces, tracking me down, sending me messages, wanting me to put ten or fifteen or TWENTY years into a paragraph or two, some of them ignoring the fact that we weren't friends to begin with, we simply KNEW EACH OTHER and we have nothing to talk about.

Some of them forgetting the fact that our breakup was not MUTUAL.

Do I realllllly want to know that following their breakup with me, they went on to either meet the man of their dreams, wrote the great American novel, became a lesbian, or hooked on with Steppenwolf?

NO! F**K NO!

I'm polite. I write responses. But I don't give them friend access. The friends I have are the friends I want. The ones that stuck by, the ones that came later, the ones that make me laugh, make me think, the ones that I've never seen, the ones I can't wait to see again, the ones I've forgiven and the ones that forgave me.

If that seems vindictive, I seek forgiveness. But lately, I have not been able to turn off the spigot of memory, and some of it is haunting me. And I don't know how much strength I have for another midwinter's haunting.

See you tomorrow.