kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"MemoryLikeGlass.0"

words

F&C:: A piece of glass :: 20041110 :: http://www.stwa.net/scrawl/viewtopic.php?t=17030

I don't remember her name, but--no, I do. I remember what she went by, at least. Neira. She was strange, but I've come to terms with the fact that I was much stranger. I'm less so, now, more conscious of it so I tone it down. More conscious of things outside the voices. It's hard. They weren't voices, they never spoke--not the way the things speak in your head, not the way your own voice speaks in your head. They were more silent voices that I had to infer, in later years, looking back. They were inclinations that have no outside source so far as I can recall, and I've been recalling a lot more than I used to. I'm used to not remembering much, but everything's coming back now. It's like a singularity and a moebius, all wrapped together.

You'll have to suspend disbelief here, but I've actually woken up remembering moments still to come. Crystal clear and dream hazy both. It's like I lived my whole life as a broken pane and now entropy's rolling back and fixing the cup that shattered on the floor. Time--linear, frozen, moment, then, now.

If I try to remember the future, it fades, almost as if the voices notice they're talking a little too loudly.

And so I guess the moebious singularity is coming up.

I wonder when I'll be--when that comes. The voices tell me--well--they imply, they imply lots of things. I think they're me. That I was closer in my thoughts to the specifics in my early years than later--this me and that me, all rolled up together. Separated, but not clinically, not pathologically.

Moments.

Real understanding.

Teaching.

Myself.

Neira was a messed up little girl, a year or two older than me. She was a strong memory that did its best to fade awway. She was the tail end of a memory that became part of my lore. And in retrospect, she was the catalyst for my understanding of memory.

A trip to the beach. Late at night. Drunken debauchery. A moment's slip in the sand slicing my foot and embedding a bottle deep within. Trails of blood on the sand. Kung-fu kick. First time hotwiring a car. Finding the keys that were lost. Heading to not-home in a daze, and arriving there to physical delight--that stopped, half-hearted, and froze--there--in my mind. Significance. Memory. A shard in my foot. Nerve awakening. Quirks of the eye.

Significance of a moment, my moment so different than hers--she welcomed me a few times, but less and less. I was strange. My voices led me different places. They told me, they inferred, they hinted--I imagined. I imagined lots of things.

Oh, yes; I remember now.

Oh, yes.

I imagined.