how to live in the past
the eternal now is the eternal past. there's no way around it. forgetfulness is a blessing.
but even in forgetting the vibes remain. i saw a guy i hated at a wedding. hated (past tense) because i'd forgotten about him. it was good to forget and much less good to remember because it all comes flooding back upon seeing that face even if i couldn't remember all of it.
the vibes remain. the structures are still there just waiting to reactivate. or not. as it may be. sometimes i imagine i would still hate that guy on site if i were afflicted with dementia. i wouldn't know why.
i might reinscribe the feeling with a new reason. a reason i made up in that moment. you know how brains are! (or maybe you don't; anyways that's the way brains are.)
we all do this. singularly and collectively. it takes a long time for the feeling to go away even when the circumstances that produced it for better or for worse have receded.
the older i get the more i believe (but not exactly believe but there's something there) in the idea of collective unconscious. memetics. that sort of thing. we reproduce these vibes all the time that were made by our parents parents. they come from nowhere it would seem. and yet here they are in our hearts. little homunculi in our heads just waiting to act out.
is there a solution for us? there isn't one for me. there is a journey maybe. or am i just in my house which is a waiting room scrolling on my phone waiting for something to happen or maybe just waiting to die.
forward motion through time--and yet. i am no longer a self i would have recognised looking forward. i am some past i do not remember looking back.
i have this nostalgia for a me that never was and never will be. i set my clock to that guy. i make plans for that guy. i am unwilling to accept because i am unwilling to remember. or because i am constitutionally indisposed to that sort of thing.
this is of course a blessing. i am the eternal now. i am a turning away again and again from the wheel. it is blessing. it is a blessing. it is a blessing.