brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Brin ([personal profile] brin_bellway) wrote2021-01-12 09:20 pm

(no subject)

[arguably cw: amnesia]


I knew a system once who were hypermnestic, and they said that sometimes it was overwhelming to go to places they'd been to many times before. The streets were crowded with past selves.

I get a weaker version of this, not enough to be overwhelming. I find it comforting, instead. I like the feeling of walking a street I've walked many times before: to feel a place in four dimensions, accreting layer upon layer upon layer. I hear the echoes of my past selves' podcasts, the rustling of the breezes around them. I feel their presence. I feel *whole*.

When I walk the streets of my town, I don't walk alone.

[personal profile] contrarianarchon 2021-01-17 06:51 am (UTC)(link)
Huh, what an interesting state. Entirely unlike my own experiences, I think. I suspect my memory is geared entirely for words and works very poorly for everything else. That would certainly explain some things. Certainly, walking even a place where I have been many times produces little more than (barely emotionally salient) familiarity.