I shower and get dressed before sitting down to work these days, and showering's still new enough to me to trigger memories, but I don't know of what, of being on holiday perhaps. I work mainly in the kitchen as well, on the hardwood floor, so when I step into the living room now, where I used to try to work, the carpet beneath my feet triggers - but again, I don't what. I suppose if I can't remember I shouldn't really call them memories, but they seem to occupy the same imaginary space. It might also be the same space that going outside occupies if you're not used to going outside, or being somewhere new, remembering something as it's happening. Not déja vu, but feeling exactly as you'll come to feel again when you remember it. "Membering" is probably not the best word for it, but I think it's whatever the opposite of waiting is. I also think it might have something to do with posture.
Forgive a bit of an existential ramble; Following a traumatic incident a number of years ago my memory is entirely unreliable, akin to my own unreliable narrator. I can never pinpoint if something actually happened, I just day-dreamed (dreamt?) of it, or it was a dream, or fiction blurred with my life, thus I've considered memory and it's trustworthiness a lot.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest that the nebulous concept you're trying to make solid is either a sci-fi sense of "two seconds into the future" wherein you're imagining how things are immediately about to be, thus when they happen - standing on carpet - you feel like it's a memory. Either that or a sense of absolute hyper-awareness so that you're living so intensely in that moment that it's almost overwhelming, to the point your subconscious is doing it's best to marry this current sensation with historical ones - memories of distant times and places - but your conscious is so saturated it hasn't the capacity to sneak into your immediate thought and remind you what it was.
I think of it like catching glimpses of things through the mist, or the synaptic equivalent of a 70s soft focus. Anyway, not pretending to be an expert, but perhaps in my twelve volume, leather-bound comment there might strike a chord of recognition.
Hope you and your loved ones are well.
"unreliable" twice in six words. I need a thesaurus.
DeleteIn the latest Ships, Seas, and the Stars about Time there's quite an interesting tangent on the ide of "flow" which might be what I'm taking about. It's an emotion rather than anything particularly felt sensorily, but not overwhelming, the opposite in fact, stabilising.
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