Prelude to Memory

“Man's memory shapes
Its own Eden within”
― Jorge Luis Borges

Writing from within is not a matter of thinking of something so very particular and then demonstrating it, as though fact. It is a layered, winding avenue of memory and a sometimes narrow walk through spaces in time which, if only they could be remembered, could open up that space in the present. From within the spaces of memory have to be unwound and drawn from that tight fabric of reality which has apparently disappeared. It is an effort to pull all the false renditions of life from the subconscious, to find what is lost to the ordinary which only appeared so at that time. That life needs to be reclaimed from closed, narrow circumstances & that the imagination needs to be liberated from the confines of definition, narrow purpose, and closed family ties is not a sadness if this loss is never recognized, but the subconscious remembers, through texture, scent and taste. Familiarities of feeling appear in everyday life and the vaguely recalled light of a previous year fills the nervous soul with anxieties to which there is no escape except remembrance and dissolution of the past into a continuous weave, that begins as pretend garment and arrives at being a fluid, interconnected space. 

If we can think of time as expanding space, and space as fluid, then the universe becomes a much different place, where the past is the present & everything which took place then is of consequence at this moment, which is a moment which goes beyond static space. For that matter, there is no static, only ecstatic, for everything is hyper-sensitive and every object maintains its position as necessary and for the motion of the whole. There is an almost Leibnizian aspect in what is written, that everything occurs for the good of the whole, but that is nonsense. Humanity tends towards equating good with pleasure or satisfaction, and bad with suffering and the lingering void we refer to as death. Without recognizing that we do not understand life we will always fear death, and always try to escape the past, or make transformations of reality, abridgements that contain our lives and perpetually claim the physical, despite it being transparent that these are the least worrying aspects of life. It may seem like a useless way to spend time, writing on this theme, but this is of incomparable importance, because humanity stutters and falters in moving with ease simply as a consequence of this overwhelming question which cannot be answered.

The dictionary, encyclopedias, the dichotomy between good and evil, the concepts of space and time, the contrast between thought and action, when all is consequence, all is discovery. Nothing is separate, and the world stutters and sounds like T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, balancing propriety with the sense of purpose and separation. A sense of exclusive, and narrow intent. Eliot's poetic fascination with the soft gaze of light cast by street lamps is familiar, and shows that when the soft light is cast the world is forgotten. The street is illuminated, but it becomes a small universe, and the lunar synthesis of the Rhapsody on a Windy Night evokes an even deeper sense of being enveloped, an enveloping of the world that takes place because of a even slighter night-time reflection of light. All is discovery, and all is held either in the rhapsodic arms of the moonlight or the dancing fire and wild flame of the sun at daybreak. All that is seen is seen in light, and our definitions are cast by shadows, caricatures of what surrounds us. The reflection of stars on water, or our faces in calm lakes when the sun grasps the water and reveals its overwhelming depth. "Memory! You have the key!", says Eliot, but still confined to the narrow purpose with which he had begun. It is not an answer, or a key, but a way of beginning that is most sought for. 

No doubt the next article will deconstruct humanity completely. Only after we have deconstructed everything can we understand anything.