Friday, August 20, 2010

The past keeps knocking

Neurons, by Hljod.Huskona (CC)
Ever since I started to post on this blog - or even earlier, when I used to update an old website in Geocities - the idea has been to write down anything that strikes me, a detail that I've noticed, an original character, a nice scent or a revolting smell, or just a thought, a fancy, an impression. Normally I stroll, look around, daydream, then something reaches my radar and I jot down a line. Later, once I'm in front of a PC, I write a post out of it. Recently though, I've been haunted by events from a more or less distant past that I didn't even captured on a paper napkin. And I find myself writing about my life in China, in Laos or in Singapore. Fortunately the memory is often quite vivid. Or maybe sometimes I produce a mix of reality and imagination so realistic that I even manage to deceive myself. 
But this is all of minor importance. The question that arouses my curiosity is a different one: is this all fortuitous? A strange trick of the brain? Mnemonic streams trapped in those canals of gray matter that like orbits of celestial bodies intersect now and after that, who knows, in a hundred years, two glacial ages or never again? Or does this past that sticks its head out of the darkness of oblivion represent something? Do these images, anecdotes, people from years ago that I thought lost forever come back to knock at the door of my memory to communicate something, a general meaning, besides the one of the single stories? Probably an analyst could give me an answer, but I have neither the money nor the wish to go and ask for it.
And then who knows? At the end there might be an easier explanation. My relation with the past is a special one: I've always been a chromosomal nostalgic. I've already told you here and more recently here
Well, let's move on with the next post from the past then.

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