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| "A glance along the crowded booths on Spintalgasse tells the story. The shoppers walk hesitantly from one stall to the next, discovering what each shop sells. Here is tobacco, but where is mustard seed? Here are sugar beets, but where is cod? Here is goat's milk, but where is sassafras? These are not tourists in Berne on their first visit. These are the citizens of Berne. Not a man can remember that two days back he bought chocolate at a shop named Ferdinand's at no. 17, or beef at the Hof delicatessen at no. 36. Each shop and its specialty must be found anew. Many walk with maps, directing the map-holders from one arcade to the next in the city they have lived in all their lives, in the street they have traveled for years. Many walk with notebooks, to record what they have learned while it is briefly in their heads. For in this world, people have no memories.
When it is time to return home at the end of the day, each person consults his address book to learn where he lives. The butcher, who has made some unattractive cuts in one day of butchery, discovers that his home is no. 29 Nageligasse. The stockbroker, whose short-term memory of the market has produced some excellent investments, reads that he now lives at no. 89 Bundesgasse. Arriving home, each man finds a woman and children waiting at the door, introduces himself, helps with the evening meal, reads stories to his children. Likewise, each woman returning from her job meets a husband, children, sofas, lamps, wallpaper, china patters. Late at night, the wife and husband do not linger at the table to discuss the day's activities, their children's school, the bank account. Instead, they smile at one another, feel the warming blood, the ache between the legs as when they met the first time fifteen years ago. They find their bedroom, stumble past family photographs they do not recognize, and pass the night in lust. For it is only habit and memory that dulls physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
A world without memory is a world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents. In order to know himself, each person carries his own Book of Life, which is filled with the history of his life. By reading its pages daily, he can relearn the identity of his parents, whether he was born high or born low, whether he did well or did poorly in school, whether he has accomplished anything in his life. Without his Book of Life, a person is a snapshot, a two-dimensional image, a ghost. In the leafy cafes on the Brunngasshalde, one hears anguished shrieking from a man who just read that he once killed another man, sighs from a woman who has just discovered she was courted by a prince, sudden boasting from a woman who has learned that she received top honors from her university ten years prior. Some pass the twilight hours at their tables reading from their Books of Life; others frantically fill its extra pages with the day's events.
With time, each person's Book of Life thickens until it cannot be read in its entirety. Then comes a choice. Elderly men and women may read the early pages, to know themselves as youths; or they may read the end, to know themselves in later years.
Some have stopped reading altogether. They have abandoned the past. They have decided that it matters not if yesterday they were rich or poor, educated or ignorant, proud or humble, in love or empty-hearted - no more than it matters how a soft wind gets into their hair. Such people look you directly in the eye and grip your hand firmly. Such people walk with the limber stride of their youth. Such people have learned how to live in a world without memory."
Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
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| ...cafe? no. lol
sometimes you have to laugh when faced with hard times. it helps ease the pain.
what is love? baby, don't hurt me. don't hurt me. no more.
ya i feel pretty scatter-brained right about now. i don't know what kind of emotions im dealing with. happy, sad, angry, confused? - everything at the same time.*sigh* - and i can't even go to u for help.
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| since February a lot has changed in my life. i haven't really written anything in here though pertaining to those matters. it is what it is. is it good? is it bad? i don't know. it just is. nothings changed since my last post. its possibly getting worse. i don't know how to deal with certain things anymore. the best way for me to help - is to run away. then maybe i can hold my tongue for a little bit longer.
i walk alone on this dark and dirty path.
i see faces behind me, and faces ahead.
i reach forward, my fingers barely grasping
onto something my eyes cannot see.
blindly following my heart along this path.
no one ever gave us a map.
so i'm lost, stuck, scared.
how do i get to a place i don't even know?
who, what, where is my final destination?
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| two paths meet - they move along side by side for quite some time. until they cross. a bitter, angry, violent intersection - leading to nothing more than a break. and there ends their parallel journey. one left bruised and jagged - the other straight and more the strong. do i leave you behind, or drag you along until your weak bones grow stronger? it's all a game of Ketchup. | | |
| now more than ever i try to protect myself. i can sense when im being listened to, when im being understood. when that connection isn't there - i don't attempt to fake one. because it'll only lead to negative things, and trust me i've seen those things play out so many times on so many different occasions. its hard to breathe sometimes. and even the distance doesn't help to bring me back. | | |
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