archive #017

24-09-2009

Sometimes I fashion myself shouting down a well in desperation: “Who am I!?”
“Am I… m I… I… I…… I………” it echoes back. “And who are you?!” “Are you? … r you… You… You…… you………” It leaves me empty and filled with riddles and truths. (Lovely, two contradictions in one sentence. I am most definitely on a roll.)

I occasionally get lost in my memories or thoughts. I find myself staring into space reliving fragments of my past. They’re always just short and little things. Memories aren’t stories. They are feelings, fragments or images; burned inside of me. They’re scar tissue, a cancer and sometimes soft, fuzzy pillows with hot chocolate on clouds of nostalgia. I find my thoughts meander and keep striking cords, pasts, histories and people. They’ve formed me to what I am. Often enough when someone asks me where my thoughts are at they are probably on some odd remembrance which was struck by the occasion. Too embarrassing or too personal to tell.

Time passes too quickly sometimes. It’s so many years, since I haven’t spoken to a particular person. Years ago I’ve been hurt. Today a year ago my grandfather passed on. Yesterday three months ago I got a question asked. All images so vibrant, precious and some painful, but it’s not only these markers stick. Words somebody said, bits of conversation, but the in-betweens, the contexts are forgotten.

My past has shaped me. Though, it are usually just occasions, or critical moments that stick in your mind and they ultimately will to yourself define your pas to yourself while you are an odd collection of the whole.
What would I be without my memories? I often find myself wondering that. How much of my personality is shaped by that which has come before? Was my personality different than when I was just a smaller, younger, more inexperienced version of myself? And if I read this is a year or ten will I understand these questions and fascinations or will this questioning, doubting young woman have become a stranger to me? I’ve begun to hope that I progress and that my surroundings progress with me; that I’ve learnt from my past and am advancing as a person, as a being and as a whole. However, at most I see circles or ellipses; a harsh and endless repetition of mistakes, wrong presumptions, hopes and faltering. Do I really have a memory to learn from? Or are those images that haunt my thoughts only disruptive forces that make me prone to err? Some tell me to look ahead. I shouldn’t remain inflicted by my self cast mesmerizing. There feels there is nothing ahead. There seems little to look at but uncertainties. I find the future frightening. I start thinking about the consequence of every action I take and feel my course is hopeless. I suffocate at the thought of what might be the future, how things are determined for me. What am I to be? (“To be?... o be… be…… be……”) It’s definitely far easier to nourish yourself with the past, it’s steady, it’s there, and it’s been. Simultaneously it’s absolutely maddening. Living in the now? That’s worth to try, just be, without question, without thought. It sounds impossible to me.

Truth to be told: these states are better temporary. Sometimes I need forceful pulling out by either myself or someone else. Some kind of assurance that what is here now is tangible and real, more real than what has been, more real than the stories I tell myself. I’m happier that way.