Maybe it’s Animals
If speaking with humans means me being tired and sick…
When I Forget What I Know
August 15, 2022
Somehow I feel like if I have it all written down then it will make more sense and may even have a bigger impact on my everyday life. But even when I do get part of the process done there’s too much to remember in one go or too much to be able to recall everything I think I need to know in any one moment.
In any one moment, I may only need to recall the name of an author or a specific term from an academic paper. But even that seems beyond me, at times. At times, I can go from nothing in my way to absolute zero recollection and the only thing that appears to change is the people around me.
Of course, it can’t be that. It can’t be the people who are causing the lack of recall. They have no power over me or my memory function so there must be something else going on. What is it? What is it that happens or what is it that changes between the times I can remember what I need to know in any one moment (in order to answer the question being asked) and the times I go blank (in conversation about the very thing I know I have in my memory store)?
That’s as far as I get with the logical, linear approach to math; that is, to knowledge and wisdom and analysis. After that it gets weird. Or should I say it gets less W.E.I.R.D. — Western Educated Independent Rich & Democratic — and more elemental… More my mind and less the mindset of rich white male thinking (white-thinking, for short).
White-Thinking: Everything logical and linear that passes through past-present-future contexts and requires a means to an end, can live here. Anything that has the quality of distinction between concrete items, events and agents, makes sense here. So my thoughts versus your choices versus this exchange versus the outcome. Both the subject and the noun are concrete. The action, the actor and the network constructed to bind them, epistemologically and directly, are all real here, in white-thinking.
Elemental Landscape: Experiences or sensations are portionally visual in nature and cannot be expressed accurately with labels such as good, fine, happy or melancholy. They cannot be contained by pointing to words such as cold, inside, thinking or negative. Experiences are felt as whole being moments and can be expressed in imagery such as busy cityscape for loud moments, and grey sunken objects for distance-from sensations.
As you can see, the switch from logical-linear to elemental is quite dramatic. Except that it’s not. It’s the most natural thing ever that happens all on its own. One minute I’m following the thought, ‘What is it that happens or what is it that changes between the times I can remember what I need to know in any one moment (in order to answer the question being asked) and the times I go blank (in conversation about the very thing I know I have in my memory store)?‘ and the very next moment I have fallen down the rabbit hole.
A picture arises. A sense of its proportion pans out to reveal a larger scope. There is birdsong and the echo of old voices repeating significant phrases. I am reminded of something that seems unconnected and before I have the chance to arrange it all in any logical-linear way, I am given a sensation. It envelops me in itself and there is nothing else going on. I become real to it. We travel together down the road and up the mountain towards its peak. Eventually, I forget altogether what it was like to be me without this sensation and I am consumed by it.
Everything seems real from within its grasp. So real in fact that I do not realise I am held in its grip. There is a flourish of struggle before we reach the tip. A sense of being overwhelmed by its universe. Of being wanton of something beyond its perspective. I am resistant. This becomes palpable and I feel it being expressed through me; through my tears, my pain, my exhaustion and believing it will never be any other way.
I am surrendered to it. And, as that occurs, there is another universe of hurt that opens up to me, to my experience of this sensation holding me in its grip. This new universe is adjacent to the old. It lives on a separate plane, on another mountaintop, not ready to be alone.
My surrender is cooking me from the inside. It makes the sensation all the more raw and I am forgotten. There is only this… pain, this… overwhelm. I become the pain. I am the overwhelm. These things are no longer happening to me, I am experiencing them directly. There is nothing to fight b/c I do not exist beyond their realm. So I just feel.
There is an entire adventure that unfolds in this space, on this mountain. Each time I go there it is different and since I cannot recall ever being there before, each time is a new experience and I am remade all over again. I live the lifetime of someone as this sensation. I exist there for as long as it takes, for as long as it needs for me to be there in this place of misery and heartbreak and joyless release. In complete abandon. I do not endure b/c there is nothing outside of what is transpiring. I simply experience.
Without realising where I am, eventually, at some magical point in the process, I find I have cascaded down the mountain. The dark, steely, slick, cold, wet, sheer edge reveals itself and reminds me of a far distant hope. I breathe. There is movement. I revisit the initial question, ‘What is it that happens or what is it that changes between the times I can remember what I need to know in any one moment (in order to answer the question being asked) and the times I go blank (in conversation about the very thing I know I have in my memory store)?‘ and find that I am nearing a black pool of water at the base of the mountain.
It’s difficult to trace my steps back to see how I got there. I can make out the entry point and some of my travelling but mostly it’s a shimmer. What remains is a sense that the answer to my query is the same as any other and it exists in the watery depths of the void. There is no other reason. There is no other explanation to be calculated. There is just this.
Even questions of why I needed to travel through such an all-encompassing sensation to get to the void, are the same. It is. There’s no story about how I’m integrating or explanation about moving from lower to higher expressions of energy. It’s an automatic process that begins when I ask a question and ends when I find that dark pool again. That’s it.
Sometimes I wish it was more complicated or at the very least that it was cocooned in a cool easy-to-package offering that I could sell on Kajabi, but it’s not. I am what I am and it is how it is.
The End.
