Hierophany

Having a memory of something, before it’s a memory. Not predilection, but being able to know what it is you will remember and recognizing something about your present condition, as if it were a memory. You have the sense that it will become a memory, one day, but it hasn’t become a memory yet, because the moment is not gone from you. It is the altering of short-term memory events, and remembering them as if they were emanating instead from the recesses of your long-term memory. And what I’m wondering is whether people high in this characteristic are less likely to kill themselves because what I am talking about is really a neo-sentimentality.

Honestly, this phenomenon I am outlining is a big part of the reason why I do not think more seriously about suicide. I imagine for a moment that the thigns swirling around me are suddenly distant memories. This leads to an extremely unpleasant inner reaction and, if I think about it enough, it will make me cry. I would guess that people more disinclined to think like that would have an easier time pulling the plug.

I’ve been able to have pre-memories relatively easy of late. I think this is because I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve accumulated enough memories such that I have an adequate impression of what I am likely to take from the present and commit to memory.

I find that I invariably miss the places in which I’ve lived. I miss living at home (though, don’t get me wrong, I have not wish to live at home right now). I miss living in the dorms at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, my high school in Aurora, IL. I miss living in the dorms at Wash U. I yearn for those days. I miss my first two apartments real bad. Those were the good old days. No! Those weren’t all good days. I remember crappy days—but only if I remember harder.

These days to me now seem somewhat shitty. But there’ve been good times. There’ve been great times. And I’m sure it’s those that I’ll remember before anything else. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone? Why not know it? I’m trying to. Trying to imagine it as though it were a long-time, ancient memory. What’s it like? What’s was it like being me right now?

I have thought about what my memories will be of my current apartment: the awful, fetid smell of the hallways; Leanne’s bad eye; the holes in the shoes she wears; my terseness with them all; Fred as Catman; Fred leaving small styrofoam plates of tunafish and catfood outside the back door for the (stray) cats to get to; the flies that swarm that catfood during hot summer days when they can probably smell it from a mile away; how I close my mouth when I bound up the stairs ‘cause I’m afraid that I’ll get flies in my mouth; but then I smell the tuna fish and god I just decide to not even breathe.

This entry posted by J Rand : 11:04