Chapter 5 (Cont.)
The situations have changed. Drastically. Maybe if I was devotionally recalling the same event on one such night five months, maybe it would be slightly different. Maybe instead of paranoia-sheltering I would engage in the memory in a analytic-poetic way. As such the recollections of discrete details in the whole arc would manifest in the brain differently. Indeed in the memory, as I walked in the rain towards Les huits without a poncho, I was in a crestfallen mood. Nothing disruptive. Not a giant horn that tears your eardrums apart. But a faint low pitch pulse that is in your wake. It does not bother you when you are tying to work. Walk. Eat. Sleep. But in every case, you are aware of the sound. In that state, the sight of the fire in the 57th story indeed brought me a cathatric joy. I was excited to see the system fail for once. This is the factual emotion of the memory at that particular time of me walking in the streets and spotting the fire. But in the memory, it has become akin to something that holds the truth of the emotion, yet gives the bearer of the memory a scope to retrofit it in the hindsight. The recaller now thinks why he felt that away and what has changed since and what not. If he is in a good mood at the time of recalling, he would dismiss it as juvenile rebellion. Maybe he would think, I still feel the same. But if the same memory happens to be recalled at the time of a paranoid state, as I am right now at 3AM here in Gauntville, a foreign city, then the way the memory is extracted from the factual truth and becomes framed by the bearer's mental state during recollection, changes quite a bit from the happy or angered mind. Or otherwise. It appears there's a bias-affect of the conscious mind on the subconscious one. Naturally. And because the memories surrounding the bar event— particularly the fire and the couple on the street and leaving the bar, back to a new instance of rain, are only recalled anecdotally. The brain did not retain, for lack of a better term, secondary details on the nature of the other events. In the exact moment, as I was walking in the rain after work. Just another mundane day. But in a way, it was slightly different than usual. I was notified formally by the board regarding my promotion. I should have been proud of something. I guess pride in self-competence was expected, normally, from someone in my position: corporate field is a cutthroat business. On the surface, it meant that I, as a relatively newcomer in one of the leading corporations in all of the NWF, made exceptional strides on the corporate ladder. You peel off the superficial and you see: you have also made new enemies, of both simply envious and of Machiavellian nature. As you go up the ranks, the politics of the office become more and more unavoidable. And over the years, when you are disillusioned with it all, your self-loathing regarding the growing degree of your involvement in this system' survival becomes more and more impenetrable. You cannot penetrate the loathe and its lather on holographic mirrors that says: "this man works for Datamangle Inc." and override it with the illusion that says: "this man has passion and ambition in his field". Because it's clear as the fucking daylight. 24 years later, my brain doesn't immediately recall the state of mind at that exact moment on the street, unsatisfied with the satisfaction theoretically posed to be exhilarating. Distinctly undistinctful. Like former war veterans who have been habitualised into a quiet domestic life for decades since. If the veteran suffered monumental moments of horror or glory, that specific moment would be kept in his memory most distinctly. The surrounding events, pre or post, do not have any less importance, since both time and the way recollection works is continuous, not discrete. Yet his brain, decades later, allow him only the most memorable, the others have become spectral. Just like his wartime companions, who were once the matter of life and death, individual identity and collective consciousness, but now have relocated to domestic life in other parts of the nation, some had perished on the battlefield. Some martyred themselves during decisive moments. Decades later, the veteran remembers the details of his morning routine better than his active days in the battlefield. He knows when to wake up every day, how to go about his routine. How to adjust to the peace, apparently a statement of his disengagement from direct role in his occupation, in the nowfound honour and dignity as a veteran. Some have come to hate war now. Not just some, a lot of them share that sentiment. But one day, when flashbacks of the most remembered, and relevantly the most unforgettable events of his active days occur in one seemingly mundane day in his life. All goes out in a flash. The moment or the chain of moments when recalled decades later, when he's comfortably adjusted to a new life, it becomes less a memory and more a haunting apparition. Then the surrounding moments of the summit-moment becomes recalled with wavering accuracy and the summit-moment becomes elaborately remembered to the point of anxiety and disorientation. Pride. Righteousness. Fear. Regret...
Funtitled #44
Animal Affirm I / Pathfinding