Today is August 22, 2002. For the first time in my life, I have just heard the John Lennon song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."

I remember when I was a pre-teen and I used to play at Roosevelt Park in Malden, and someone had spray-painted that title across the side of the largeish shed that housed the park's bathrooms. I remember thinking, while swinging toward those big white words in increasingly dangerous arcs, "Oh...wow...really? I have got to think more about what that means...."

I never did.

Now, twenty years later, I know that "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" is really nothing more than the title of a relatively mediocre John Lennon song. However, with this unique, incredibly rare chance at perspective, I do understand that my life gets altered -- changing my past, reconfiguring my future -- every day.

Nothing ever leaves your poetic memory; everything you know is poetry.

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