the fallacy of memories
words.
hrmm...
images........
a picture is worth a thousand words.
but my head doesn't do memory slideshows.
my head does the moving pictures thing. 24 frames a second, maybe more. pause, stop, play, rewind, fast forward. fast forward. replay.
eject.
and when we write the words down they come out in strings, sometimes unattached, skipping or dragging along in front of a feisty kittens paws. and when the cat catches it, the ends become frayed.
sometimes tose strings become braided. this firmly connects memories that in reality were unattached. but sometimes they get all knotted up and we can't unravel them. our brains get stuck. several events become one.
and then there are the lost scenes. the things that happened that got deleted from our memory at the time, or later. how are we supposed to connect those cut strings? tie another knot, hope that it makes sense.
i used to wish that i could access my memories and play them in a VCR.
when i was a child, i was convinced that there were cameras in every room, and we were put here for the entertainment of some higher up type of being. like the truman show, but it was before the truman show. i think i thought the higher up was god. with a non-religious family, i didn't have a good idea of what god was. he was just some guy who had more resources than everyone else. and he watched us play games and laughed at us. and watched us get beaten and laughed at us. and watched the perversions of our young minds....and laughed at us. i would get embarrassed when i failed at something, even when there were no witnesses, just because i thought they were always watching. they being god and his 'angels.'
maybe it was just imagination.
maybe it was the beginning of the mental illness that becomes more and more apparent every year.
when i was eight, i had my first hallucination. at least it was the first time i saw something that i knew from what others told me that it was impossible for me to see what i had seen. but i never sleeped back then. it may have been sleep dedrivation and fear that triggered the vision.
it wasn't imagination. i knew what my imagination was like. i could spend days in my head, imagining things, places, people and their actions. i wrote stories in my head back then. and when i came out of my head, i performed. i knew what wasn't real, what was imagination, and what was real.
but i had so much irrational fear.
i became of praying mantis's that year. not because the insect disturbed me. i loved playing with the insect. but that year,their eyes started filling me with an unusual and irrational fear. back then i wanted to be an entymologist. i had never been afraid of bugs. they fascinated me. for years after that, i never wanted to touch a praying mantis again.
female praying mantises would bite the heads off of their mate. so would black widows. black widows never scared me. that same year, i got bit by a black widow that i was keeping as a pet. my mother wouldn't bring me to the hospital. the bite was on my hand. it stung, and felt numb for awhile, but i was fine anyway.
isaiah and i drew a picture together once, and in the center of was what i referred to as the conch mantis. it had the body of a praying mantis, but the disproportionate head of a giant conch shell. i don't think i ever told him, but i was glad he chose to draw a shell for the head instead of the head of the insect. i hated looking at those black eyes.
i think that isaiah may have had the same irrational fear of those black eyes as i did.
there are some things that are so hard to explain, in the moving pictures of my memories. like how easily it is to see those black eyes everywhere. all that ever really was needed was a few shadows. i would never feel more safe than in the complete blackness of a windowless but familiar room. well, what room doesn't have windows, really?
the loft bedroom that isaiah and i had slept in had only one window, which rocky had rigged so it had a little door that swung down to keep the sunlight out so it wouldn't wake him up in the day. sleeping in that room with isaiah, pitch blackness and his arms around me, was probably the first time i ever lived without fear of anything. for that short period of time, i could forget about shadows and mean men, cuz i was safe. the only thing that could hurt me was him. he hurt me sometimes, but not usually. we were intelligent adults with the emotional maturity of retarded children. any little thing could hurt us from the other's mouth. and we were suggestible. and people saw what we had and were jealous and had no qualms about fucking with our gullible abandoned child minds.
that is when i learned that words could be twisted, no matter how honest they were in origin. twisted honesty could be used to hurt the ones you loved. and once these twisted words were introduced, they could twist the memories.
i hope i never allow my memories of isaiah to become any more twisted than they already are.
hrmm...
images........
a picture is worth a thousand words.
but my head doesn't do memory slideshows.
my head does the moving pictures thing. 24 frames a second, maybe more. pause, stop, play, rewind, fast forward. fast forward. replay.
eject.
and when we write the words down they come out in strings, sometimes unattached, skipping or dragging along in front of a feisty kittens paws. and when the cat catches it, the ends become frayed.
sometimes tose strings become braided. this firmly connects memories that in reality were unattached. but sometimes they get all knotted up and we can't unravel them. our brains get stuck. several events become one.
and then there are the lost scenes. the things that happened that got deleted from our memory at the time, or later. how are we supposed to connect those cut strings? tie another knot, hope that it makes sense.
i used to wish that i could access my memories and play them in a VCR.
when i was a child, i was convinced that there were cameras in every room, and we were put here for the entertainment of some higher up type of being. like the truman show, but it was before the truman show. i think i thought the higher up was god. with a non-religious family, i didn't have a good idea of what god was. he was just some guy who had more resources than everyone else. and he watched us play games and laughed at us. and watched us get beaten and laughed at us. and watched the perversions of our young minds....and laughed at us. i would get embarrassed when i failed at something, even when there were no witnesses, just because i thought they were always watching. they being god and his 'angels.'
maybe it was just imagination.
maybe it was the beginning of the mental illness that becomes more and more apparent every year.
when i was eight, i had my first hallucination. at least it was the first time i saw something that i knew from what others told me that it was impossible for me to see what i had seen. but i never sleeped back then. it may have been sleep dedrivation and fear that triggered the vision.
it wasn't imagination. i knew what my imagination was like. i could spend days in my head, imagining things, places, people and their actions. i wrote stories in my head back then. and when i came out of my head, i performed. i knew what wasn't real, what was imagination, and what was real.
but i had so much irrational fear.
i became of praying mantis's that year. not because the insect disturbed me. i loved playing with the insect. but that year,their eyes started filling me with an unusual and irrational fear. back then i wanted to be an entymologist. i had never been afraid of bugs. they fascinated me. for years after that, i never wanted to touch a praying mantis again.
female praying mantises would bite the heads off of their mate. so would black widows. black widows never scared me. that same year, i got bit by a black widow that i was keeping as a pet. my mother wouldn't bring me to the hospital. the bite was on my hand. it stung, and felt numb for awhile, but i was fine anyway.
isaiah and i drew a picture together once, and in the center of was what i referred to as the conch mantis. it had the body of a praying mantis, but the disproportionate head of a giant conch shell. i don't think i ever told him, but i was glad he chose to draw a shell for the head instead of the head of the insect. i hated looking at those black eyes.
i think that isaiah may have had the same irrational fear of those black eyes as i did.
there are some things that are so hard to explain, in the moving pictures of my memories. like how easily it is to see those black eyes everywhere. all that ever really was needed was a few shadows. i would never feel more safe than in the complete blackness of a windowless but familiar room. well, what room doesn't have windows, really?
the loft bedroom that isaiah and i had slept in had only one window, which rocky had rigged so it had a little door that swung down to keep the sunlight out so it wouldn't wake him up in the day. sleeping in that room with isaiah, pitch blackness and his arms around me, was probably the first time i ever lived without fear of anything. for that short period of time, i could forget about shadows and mean men, cuz i was safe. the only thing that could hurt me was him. he hurt me sometimes, but not usually. we were intelligent adults with the emotional maturity of retarded children. any little thing could hurt us from the other's mouth. and we were suggestible. and people saw what we had and were jealous and had no qualms about fucking with our gullible abandoned child minds.
that is when i learned that words could be twisted, no matter how honest they were in origin. twisted honesty could be used to hurt the ones you loved. and once these twisted words were introduced, they could twist the memories.
i hope i never allow my memories of isaiah to become any more twisted than they already are.