Monday, June 20, 2005

hunting

a tuesday at 10 to 2
the wind blows papers from the gravitation field of the desk, to the gravitational field of the floor.
I'm sitting in the gravitational field of a torn grey plastic computer chair
thinking about nothing special.
there are 5 white peanut buns up for grabs if anyone is interested.
very white.
there are 6 kinds of drinks - cocoa, green tea, coffee ( but no milk) muscat flavored green tea, earl grey tea, and special black tea spice tea.
there are 44 days left in Japan
there are 11 chocolates for the students who won last week's game (but I had no treats then)there are 125 minutes left in my workday
there is one other teacher in the office right now - Hiraide sensei - a 40ish math teacher - he is sort of an upstanding man, in that way that attracts women - he likes to take photos out the window of our office. There are 2 floors under our office.
There are 2 wisdom teeth in my mouth which will be extracted next week.
There is 1 mount fuji which isn't visible today due to the June haze.

Its weird to count things. to break things up into seperate pieces. Especially time is strange to break up.
I wonder how many millimetres my hair grows in a day - is it even countable?
But I don't think we really count time in such strict pieces - not in our memory - not even as its happening really. I think people are episodic. We see time in something a lot more like phrases or waves. My memory of times are based around certain markers - mostly people and places. and I tend to forget times which didn't have strong markers.But on the other hand, I have always been interested in remembering totally uninteresting times - plain times, repetitive times. I remember very clearly when I was 11 - drying my hands on a royal blue towel in that long bathroom at the Mckinnon's house ( the bathroom with the shower where I first noticed my breasts appearing ) and thinking - ' I will never never forget this moment' I don't know why I was interested in it - but I have several clear memories of specific individual banal moments like that which I specifically remembered.
normal banal memories are really sedimentary blocks of an action repeated hundreds of times over. I already can't remember brushing my teeth last night. I know I did it, but I don't remember where I stood, or walked, how long I did it for, how good a job I did. I want to do a photo project where I take about 50 photos of one person making a face they always make over and over. I guess thats similar in a way. Can you remember a particular smile someone gave you? Only if they are a stranger or something and it was the only time. People you know have a certain ' smile' which is the way they always smile over and over. But its very hard to remember specific smiles.

For me anyway, sedimentary memories form the foundation of our lives, and episodic memories are the decorations. I like the decorations better, in some ways, because they are attractive and, honestly - the more enjoyable things in life. But that foundation is intriguing to me from a philosophical / artistic point of view because in a way the secrets to ourselves seem to be in the parts we are unaware of. I guess you could say as soon as I'm aware something it will change - and of course thats true - but I wouldn't say that spoils the endevour. Just something to take into account.

1 comment:

Rhya said...

wow.
last night on my run i was thinking about these types of memories, but also how they can be twisted by the repitition.

While running I always remember Bettle, a family friend who took me running as a kid, and told me to loosen my shoulders, because women tend to hold their stress in their shoulders. I specifically remember the green trees though, blurring behind Bettle, and the laboured breathing...the words almost feel secondary, pasted on, past down along my memory till today...i can't even be sure that is what she said, but i am sure of the green green blur and the breathing.
muchos love, i can't get enough of your writting.
r

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