Memories as Matter as Memories in Jeans and a Grey Sueded Jersey

Cracker Jacks and faux wood grained dining room tables lined the small hallway of my first place of residence after my moving out. In the years that have passed since then I can only recall the remarkable whereabouts of my own internal clock as it pointed me down some poignant corridor of which I was unaware. In the midst of the moving out I had forgotten to pick up childhood memories which were later decimated in a fire that torched the home. It was within the sentimentality of these items being reduced to ash and the memories of them that I final could ponder the meanings.

It also gave way for me to ponder the fear that one day my mental capabilities would fail me and I would be forever grasping at straws to remember everything that drove the feelings for these items. In that midst I became lost into the smell of these items. Never, even then, could I recall vivid memories but only memories of sleeping or playing with the items as well as the way they smelled. It’s like the times you step into an old house and you reel for a second once a smell hits your nose. It’s a feeling like you know this place and its secrets when in reality it’s just your mind recognizing the smell and trying to place it with preexisting memories while observing the place you’re in.

That reeling has always been my favorite part of my memories, like that house held some long lost secrets of which I could not remember. As if I had existed in this place before yet unable to remember because who I was when these secrets unfolded only echoes inside of me, a faint trace of a former life. Not a reincarnation if you will but a memory residing in my makeup of atoms and quarks and stardust.

Now there has never actually existed this hallway lined with Cracker Jacks and fake wood tables, nor has any of my childhood items been destroyed in a fire. Hell, I’ve recently moved back home after an unsuccessful excursion to Tampa; though I miss the town and my friends there and want to go back. I also am not quite sure where I stand on this idea of memory residing in our makeup though in a reincarnation sort of way. I do however wonder about that reeling feeling because it almost feels like I’m reaching some understanding of the place before it is snookered away by the mystery of the senses mingling. To me it feels akin Poe saying that, “All experience, in matters of philosophical discovery, teaches us that, in such discovery, it is the unforeseen upon which we must calculate most largely.” and Solnit’s response that what Poe is saying is that one must, “…recognize the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.” When that spin hits it’s our being keeping balance between echoes of memory with the present load on the senses. It’s our being saying, “Hey, I remember something or was it a dream?”

It is a most wondrous pondering to think of the Conservation of Mass in correlation with our existence especially in terms of our memories. Is it possible that our memories aren’t just the essence of our being but somehow tied into our lives? There has to be something more than just wires in the brain getting crisscrossed with when we entering places and the smells hit our nose to cause us to whirl. According to Henri Bergson there are two types of memory with one being habitual memory and the other true memory. The habitual memory is memory that is repetitively assigned a place in our minds while true memory are what we consider the memory of past events. This true memory has no actual place, it’s that spirit or our essence. I need to actually check out the book which I shall after I finish the three I have by Solnit.

I’m not sure where I’ll come out after these readings but I still just have this feeling in my gut that the mystery of memory will never be completely solved. It has been a philosophical question for time out of mind to what are memories really are. Selectionism seems to believe the same as Bergson and for expansion on this whole question will lead me to academic research. Still, I can’t get that feeling out of my mind every time I come upon a place that I’ve never been before.

Maybe someday I’ll walk into a room and it’ll be a hallway lined with empty boxes of Cracker Jacks or faux wood tables or maybe not. Imagination is a wild and crazy beast that we’ve lost touch with. Someday we might prove that these true memories have no actual bases in reality; which will be quite saddening. I like to think though that there’s something much more going on, more convoluted that we can imagine for if it’s possible as in Eternal Sunshine to delete select memories then they can’t be separate from us…at least I don’t think so.

An Exercise in Rambling Exploration

Sometimes I wonder about random things as I sit here at night listening to music or pondering whatever my mind churned up. One delicacy on which I dine run on the questions of evil, not the problems but questions because I’m a little rusty on my philosophies. Questions that want to know if there really is true evil since even Hitler thought he was doing what was right. Is evil an objective concept or is another part of perception? And if that’s the case then where do we move on from there? Because who really said that life is sacred besides some religious texts. Even some pagans sacrificed people though it was usually an honor and there was still some semblance of respect for life. As a professor once told me, there are little t and capital t truths, the objective and subjective but where’s the full blown proof that even that isn’t just some objective/subjective bullshit?

But then again, where do we start selling out in the day and age. Back at home after living in Tampa and exploring various aspects of myself I find that I’m not done exploring or enjoying the experiences that took place while there. So I battle these churning seas within the vastness of my existence. Our generation has been called a lot of things but no one has ever been able to hit it on the head when we’re desperate for some definition of ourselves. Student loans, political and economic unrest and upheavel, killer viruses and parents basements. We used to discuss our dreams, now we’re discussing our dreams on a budget. If this is growing up then I’m never going to be for it. My heart isn’t is it. These loans, 30 thousand or so, are hanging over my head like finding a job that affords the ability to not be forever defined by debt. It’s a serious delimma that I don’t think most people have seriously tried to face. Where do we go from here if my generation keeps rowing with one oar? Mass suicides as people realize the American dream has become a facade? Will there be a final rebellion of fed-up adults ready to reset the mess we’re in? The only thing that I fear is that no one is thinking any of this and it’s just wheels on the bus going round and round and round until we’re nauseous without realizing why.

This all is incoherent rambling of a restless mind so any continuity might not be availiable.

Signed,

the author

Other pieces abound that I came up with while running tonight and playing the themes of Wicked over in my head. One would expect that to be situated up above but it turned into thoughts about dreams and sleep. After getting back from Tampa I had an awful time getting to sleep. I assume now because I was going out far too much after months of sun, adventures and no alcohol to keep me grounded. It was also to sort of avoid a deep distance that has come between me and one of my best friends but it only brought that out subconsciously. I’ll take the levels of pain in our separation or “weirdness” as we call it that come and go. Makes you wonder about the true state of sobriety in the world. Are we ever really sober? Whether it’s substances we’re addicted to or technology, I wonder, with the definition of addiction, if we’re not all addicts. What is sobriety?! But I made a massive digression…

When we sleep, what if we’re not going off into some world of dreams but what if our being (not our existence) but our being slips out and mingles somewhere with others that are asleep. They say when we sleep that even if we don’t recognize the people in our dreams that they’re someone we’ve seen in our day to day life. Imagine if dreams are just this big room where our beings mingle and tell stories of other lives or dimensions and that becomes our dreams. Then we’re mingling with people we don’t know and the larger the story being told the more of them are in the dream yet each one is telling a different story at the same time so it’s a fucking hodgepodge of stories flying around and mingling together. None of that’s what happens but the concept is a fun play for my imagination. If that was the way of our dreams they could be like monkey typing Shakespeare and so one day they all combine at one time and our dreams are just one giant dream existing all at once.

Finally, as most of my numerous musings like to follow we end on thoughts of love and the works. I’ve been meaning to write an entire blog devoted to love. What we don’t realize that healthy relationships aren’t just pure emotion or lofty passions but also the ability to communicate. We have to realize that you don’t have to sacrifice ourselves for love as women who have gotten out of abusive relationships will tell you. They thought it was love so they sacrified and took the abuse because they loved him and clearly that’s not the way of things. It’s a heart/mind thing, not full one or the other. I may not agree with everything but if I fall in love with how your mind works and how you make me feel then you better believe it’s not just that butterfly feeling crap we’ve been fed is the way to know we’re in love.

Speaking of being in love, our society has dictated that girls just want those three little words. Well I say, fuck that. Why the hell are we still teaching this idea? I love a lot of people, men and women, but I’ve only been in love a couple times in my life and I think that’s a lot more than “I love you” has ever meant. I love you shouldn’t be those words that start the next step in the process. I’m sparse in saying I love someone because I used to live by the code that I don’t love unless I really care for someone. I’m still working on my own personal philosphy so a full blog on that will explore this more. The bottom line is we’ve all had relationships where we love someone but our deepest relationships are the ones where we can look at the person and say, “I’m in love with you.” I think it’s time society updated our definition of how we show our yearnings for someone in the way we use our words. Throw out those three little words and lets make this meaningful again and start saying those five little words. Losing a best friend can be just as bad if not worse than a break-up with someone you’re in love with but it’s pretty fucking close. I have never felt as crushed as when true heartbreak has taken hold.

Maybe we’re existing in a state of anomie and don’t realize it?

signed,

Fyodor Camus