City of Legends

Not possible.

To move beyond memory, one must forget who they are, where they have been and what they have experienced. A persistent vegetative state might make it so, but that’s not a status I have devoutly wished for in this life.

Today is August 14th. It is a crossroads date (someone with my sense of time and history has man) as it is the anniversary of one or more events, that cross paths in my understanding of the world I live in. My birthday is August 16th, Psyche’s is August 12th. For the five years we were together, we tended to celebrate on the 14th as a compromise date.

There are other things that have occurred on Thursdays, on the 14th of a month, even on August 14th, and in my morning contemplations it is remarkable to remember some of them and close circles and utter words to keep promises (I may be slow, often, as I forget or am distracted or given rationale to forget, but I generally get around to those oaths I have made) that I have made, in good faith, altered only by the external forces I have no control over.

In that context, you may want to check out a new poem I posted this morning on Amomancer entitled the mantra of severing, which is about keeping promises, even ancient ones, when they are recalled. There will be those who believe they know of what I speak, but to imagine that, in my entire life, I have only walked one road with one companion to one end and made one promise…that would be a very blissful life, and chaos still calls.

I once wrote that "memory is the curse of those who care". It leads us to a terrible and an arrogant place, where we think the world sees with our eyes and feels with our hearts, and knows us. When I was a child I used to blow my mind by trying to contemplate infinity, but one day I hit upon something more incredible to contemplate: There are billions of people on this planet, most (if not all) of them leading lives as experientially, intellectually and emotionally complex as our own. That many thoughts, that many emotions, that many dreams, and God knows them all, and I can never even know for sure my own heart.

We never move beyond memory. At best, we acknowledge the sprained ankle of life and adjust to the limping.