quickly, while i can, i must remember...
May. 10th, 2013 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riverofcuriosdo you think we could live without memories? memory is a funny thing because dead though it is we continue to wrangle it to our will and it still incites joy or pain in us. but if we are but a sum of our experiences, and experiences have passed, and we still possess in us the similar impulses, desires and fears, characteristically the tenets of our identity and driving forces of these experiences, then we could shed the deadweight of memory and move forward without ever having to look back. there is no burden of eternal recurrence because we are always governed by the same impulses and everything repeats itself infinitely in different forms.
or something like that...
i.
i remember being 6 very keenly, when i first went to primary school and i for the first time experienced cold mornings waiting for the school bus when the world was very quiet and you could just hear the faint whirr of engines behind the cloak of dark and see the fading of the moon to make way for the sun.
ii.
we were 17 and on our last day at ymca-unacas, phnom penh, cambodia, we woke up at 4am to send the kids to primary school. initially caught under the deception of the sun which rose 3 hours earlier than it usually does at home, the 4am sun washed the fields with light and it was so so terribly cold. we washed our faces and brushed our teeth over the drains with water bottles and i kept thinking to myself, savour this moment, savour this moment, because you'll never have a morning quite like this again and you'll never feel so cold again
iii.
i am 20 now and occasionally the cold winds catch me by surprise, when at 2 or 3am i go to the kitchen and it greets me by a small opening of the windows. sometimes i reappear later and i miss it.
on one hand, i understand completely why antoinette saw remembering, as a means of determining her identity, her being; then on the other hand, i want to say, silly girl, what if you remember the unreal? then what does that make you?
once when examining oranges, ms tan paused and in the stale of the room her words: what weight does memory have? and it made me sad, because i always relied on memory, and then i must be floating. but now i know, now i know -- memory is a deadweight. and i am sinking into the earth's soil.
it has been very quiet and very cold.
or something like that...
i.
i remember being 6 very keenly, when i first went to primary school and i for the first time experienced cold mornings waiting for the school bus when the world was very quiet and you could just hear the faint whirr of engines behind the cloak of dark and see the fading of the moon to make way for the sun.
ii.
we were 17 and on our last day at ymca-unacas, phnom penh, cambodia, we woke up at 4am to send the kids to primary school. initially caught under the deception of the sun which rose 3 hours earlier than it usually does at home, the 4am sun washed the fields with light and it was so so terribly cold. we washed our faces and brushed our teeth over the drains with water bottles and i kept thinking to myself, savour this moment, savour this moment, because you'll never have a morning quite like this again and you'll never feel so cold again
iii.
i am 20 now and occasionally the cold winds catch me by surprise, when at 2 or 3am i go to the kitchen and it greets me by a small opening of the windows. sometimes i reappear later and i miss it.
on one hand, i understand completely why antoinette saw remembering, as a means of determining her identity, her being; then on the other hand, i want to say, silly girl, what if you remember the unreal? then what does that make you?
once when examining oranges, ms tan paused and in the stale of the room her words: what weight does memory have? and it made me sad, because i always relied on memory, and then i must be floating. but now i know, now i know -- memory is a deadweight. and i am sinking into the earth's soil.
it has been very quiet and very cold.
