Memory?
Ok so I've been thinking a lot lately about memory and what a strange thing it is. The other night I was laying in my bed and I somehow got this feeling that I was back in my room in Cape Town. The whole room flip-flopped and i had this overwhelming sensation that if i opened my eyes the white furniture that Janine's dad made for me would be there, and the blue walls and all my pictures.
I heard voices downstairs because I went to bed earlier than normal, and it felt like they were down the hall in our living room... it was like I was a kid again.
It was weird because that's still there stored in my mind, even though i can never go back to that place and touch the deckled walls or see the dragon drawn in permanent markers. I felt like when I woke up I'd be back in that place which now, for some weird reason, is not there any more.
Yes, John Wycliffe still stands. But it stands vacant of all the people who were there when I was there. I was there with them only last year. They've left and scattered into the strong winds of the Cape. All of them went through their dramatic change now, and it's so weird... because I have this overwhelming sense that nothing will ever be the same again, and yet more than anything I want to go there and see everyone and everything in exactly the same way, and I want to do the same things and experience at least a sense of the familiarity.
I was thinking though, that even when I lived there, there were the days that seemed so far away at different times. I don't know if that makes sense, but while I was there when I was about 14 or 15 I had these memories of being 9 and 10 and those memories seemed ages and a lifetime ago because so much had changed inside and out. But I remember when I was 9 or 10, and I wrote of something happening to me in the year 2000 and the idea of being that old and in a different millenium seemed like something that would never happen to me, like something so far away that would never actually happen.
But even at those ages there were memories I had of pre-school and being with Cara that seemed like forever ago. Those first words we spoke to each other and hanging out and watching Tom and Jerry. But even when I was in pre-school, in those carefree days of make believe and wonder and excitement and only physical pain, I remember having a sense of things that were even further in my past, rambling to people about things that had happened to me before that. I remember talking about Brian and Jason, looking backwards to remember them and playing with them and staff comference and a little black girl who I was such good friends with, and a girl named Janine Engelbrecht that I had been best friends with for a time period of life.
My point is that it seems the mind goes through these stages, and while you're going through those stages you're so intently enraptured in who you are and where you are, and the future seems impossible, while the past becomes mere memory, and memory fades. Almost like a cycle. Irresistable, it moves on pulling you with it, and todays moments become memories. So I wonder if one day the things that I'm so desperate about today will not even really be remembered. I don't remember the feeling of being a baby desperate for food, and desperate to communicate. Someday I will probably forget the struggles of being a teenager. These days may also become intangible and disjointed rocolletcions just hovering in my mind.
I heard voices downstairs because I went to bed earlier than normal, and it felt like they were down the hall in our living room... it was like I was a kid again.
It was weird because that's still there stored in my mind, even though i can never go back to that place and touch the deckled walls or see the dragon drawn in permanent markers. I felt like when I woke up I'd be back in that place which now, for some weird reason, is not there any more.
Yes, John Wycliffe still stands. But it stands vacant of all the people who were there when I was there. I was there with them only last year. They've left and scattered into the strong winds of the Cape. All of them went through their dramatic change now, and it's so weird... because I have this overwhelming sense that nothing will ever be the same again, and yet more than anything I want to go there and see everyone and everything in exactly the same way, and I want to do the same things and experience at least a sense of the familiarity.
I was thinking though, that even when I lived there, there were the days that seemed so far away at different times. I don't know if that makes sense, but while I was there when I was about 14 or 15 I had these memories of being 9 and 10 and those memories seemed ages and a lifetime ago because so much had changed inside and out. But I remember when I was 9 or 10, and I wrote of something happening to me in the year 2000 and the idea of being that old and in a different millenium seemed like something that would never happen to me, like something so far away that would never actually happen.
But even at those ages there were memories I had of pre-school and being with Cara that seemed like forever ago. Those first words we spoke to each other and hanging out and watching Tom and Jerry. But even when I was in pre-school, in those carefree days of make believe and wonder and excitement and only physical pain, I remember having a sense of things that were even further in my past, rambling to people about things that had happened to me before that. I remember talking about Brian and Jason, looking backwards to remember them and playing with them and staff comference and a little black girl who I was such good friends with, and a girl named Janine Engelbrecht that I had been best friends with for a time period of life.
My point is that it seems the mind goes through these stages, and while you're going through those stages you're so intently enraptured in who you are and where you are, and the future seems impossible, while the past becomes mere memory, and memory fades. Almost like a cycle. Irresistable, it moves on pulling you with it, and todays moments become memories. So I wonder if one day the things that I'm so desperate about today will not even really be remembered. I don't remember the feeling of being a baby desperate for food, and desperate to communicate. Someday I will probably forget the struggles of being a teenager. These days may also become intangible and disjointed rocolletcions just hovering in my mind.