(no subject)
Memories, like dreams, are hard for me to pin down, but they always leave behind this residual sensation - a vapor trail that slowly dissipates as the origin of the experience roars off into the distance.
I find it very hard to leave places and people behind, and I often turn my thoughts towards what's come before in search of comfort. I don't think it means that I'm unhappy with the present, or that I think my past experiences were eminently preferable to what's going on in my life now - its because I like the sensation the recollections conjure. It's a palpable feeling, but it defies any definition. I just know that I want to harness it, and I've found turning to memories is the best way to do this.
I had a dream recently that brought that same elusive feeling back again - the one where I feel covered in soft light. Usually, when I wake up after one particularly lucid sleep, I jot down a descriptive account of what happened. Just a few unadorned lines, so I can capture and glue the fragments together, and return to them whenever I pick up my journal and browse through the dates. I don't do it very often though, because each time I go back, the sensation is a little less keen. I can still feel the warmth in my bones, but it doesn't produce the same elation. Each time I re-visit a place, real or imagined, in memory or the present, the sensation undergoes a half-life, and the trail becomes faint. It's as if I'm eroding my own happiness.
The dream was too special - I knew it wasn't real, because everything was how I wanted it. Just perfect.
Last night I typed in "twilight car-ride, Shropshire, Christmas '03" to my computer and the photographs, all 100,000 of them, crowded the screen, vying for space in front of my eyes, and I was overwhelmed. If there was time enough, a flip book that would've lasted a whole half an hour could've been made from them. As the pages flapped over one another like a collapsing house of cards, the scent of pine needles and smoke would've drifted in a breeze through the house.
I felt dizzy, as if I was halfway through stepping off a precipice, above a great plain. I fell off my chair and onto the hard laminate floor with a thud, knocking the crown of my head. Stunned. I watched the shadows casted on the wall by the computer screen playing, until I drifted off into my subconscious again.
I find it very hard to leave places and people behind, and I often turn my thoughts towards what's come before in search of comfort. I don't think it means that I'm unhappy with the present, or that I think my past experiences were eminently preferable to what's going on in my life now - its because I like the sensation the recollections conjure. It's a palpable feeling, but it defies any definition. I just know that I want to harness it, and I've found turning to memories is the best way to do this.
I had a dream recently that brought that same elusive feeling back again - the one where I feel covered in soft light. Usually, when I wake up after one particularly lucid sleep, I jot down a descriptive account of what happened. Just a few unadorned lines, so I can capture and glue the fragments together, and return to them whenever I pick up my journal and browse through the dates. I don't do it very often though, because each time I go back, the sensation is a little less keen. I can still feel the warmth in my bones, but it doesn't produce the same elation. Each time I re-visit a place, real or imagined, in memory or the present, the sensation undergoes a half-life, and the trail becomes faint. It's as if I'm eroding my own happiness.
The dream was too special - I knew it wasn't real, because everything was how I wanted it. Just perfect.
Last night I typed in "twilight car-ride, Shropshire, Christmas '03" to my computer and the photographs, all 100,000 of them, crowded the screen, vying for space in front of my eyes, and I was overwhelmed. If there was time enough, a flip book that would've lasted a whole half an hour could've been made from them. As the pages flapped over one another like a collapsing house of cards, the scent of pine needles and smoke would've drifted in a breeze through the house.
I felt dizzy, as if I was halfway through stepping off a precipice, above a great plain. I fell off my chair and onto the hard laminate floor with a thud, knocking the crown of my head. Stunned. I watched the shadows casted on the wall by the computer screen playing, until I drifted off into my subconscious again.