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brin_bellway[strong cw: amnesia, unreality]
(somewhat related to the previous post; also inspired by this short story I read recently)
You know those mystics who claim that this world is a roleplaying game higher beings play? That we're all higher beings who deliberately blocked off our memories and otherwise cut ourselves temporarily down to size, so that we could properly experience what being mere mortals is like?
I feel like quite a bit about my personality and history makes a lot of sense if [this is true, and my higher self *immediately regretted the hell* out of this decision].
Like, some subconscious part of me that's still Aware is going "what the hell was I *thinking*, it's *horrible* having a memory so small and fragile, oh god make it *stop*"
---
P.S. I drafted these last two posts on the morning of October 25th, 2019, but decided not to post them until I'd had a chance to actually *do* the book scanning I planned on, to make the previous post about the present and not the future.
That evening, I was re-reading some old dream-journal entries and came across this one:
Aug 26th 2012
The worst part is knowing there's nothing she can do. Nothing she can cling to, nothing to anchor her. Nowhere to keep those oh-so-fragile pieces of self for safekeeping. She's trapped in a bubble universe and it's about to pop. That book she was reading will be gone, and so will the girl reading it. All that will be left is the terror of dying and the Dalek viewpoint of her lovely book and I was so *afraid*...
And the bubble pops and I wake and I scramble and there's nothing almost nothing fragments so few and so small and why.
(For the record, I remembered that this entry existed but hadn't known it was in the particular section I was reading.)
'Well,' I thought. 'Fitting to see that one again, today of all days.'
I hadn't originally planned to give this post a title. I changed my mind.
(somewhat related to the previous post; also inspired by this short story I read recently)
You know those mystics who claim that this world is a roleplaying game higher beings play? That we're all higher beings who deliberately blocked off our memories and otherwise cut ourselves temporarily down to size, so that we could properly experience what being mere mortals is like?
I feel like quite a bit about my personality and history makes a lot of sense if [this is true, and my higher self *immediately regretted the hell* out of this decision].
Like, some subconscious part of me that's still Aware is going "what the hell was I *thinking*, it's *horrible* having a memory so small and fragile, oh god make it *stop*"
---
P.S. I drafted these last two posts on the morning of October 25th, 2019, but decided not to post them until I'd had a chance to actually *do* the book scanning I planned on, to make the previous post about the present and not the future.
That evening, I was re-reading some old dream-journal entries and came across this one:
Aug 26th 2012
The worst part is knowing there's nothing she can do. Nothing she can cling to, nothing to anchor her. Nowhere to keep those oh-so-fragile pieces of self for safekeeping. She's trapped in a bubble universe and it's about to pop. That book she was reading will be gone, and so will the girl reading it. All that will be left is the terror of dying and the Dalek viewpoint of her lovely book and I was so *afraid*...
And the bubble pops and I wake and I scramble and there's nothing almost nothing fragments so few and so small and why.
(For the record, I remembered that this entry existed but hadn't known it was in the particular section I was reading.)
'Well,' I thought. 'Fitting to see that one again, today of all days.'
I hadn't originally planned to give this post a title. I changed my mind.
Re: Yo dawg, I herd you like memory play
Date: 2021-02-15 11:04 pm (UTC)--
I know there's a bit in one of the Mary Poppins books (which are very odd overall) where babies can understand the language of animals until their first tooth comes through, and that's why they scream so much when they're teething, because they don't want to lose that knowledge. I mean, personally speaking from when I was getting my wisdom teeth in, teething is quite agonizing enough by itself, but that and the sort of Peter Pan "grow up and forget" concept definitely seem potentially related. I don't know if PL Travers was Jewish or not. Hm, that would actually explain some things maybe? *pokes google*
Doesn't look like she was Jewish, *does* look like she was a big fan of JM Barrie, so there's that. Interesting, I guess? I'm not so familiar with like folklore, but I can think of a George MacDonald bit where babies were angels (not Heaven-angels but naked-child-angels) who turned into shooting stars to become incarnated, and a Rudyard Kipling story where teenage boys writing adventure stories may remember their past lives in great detail until they first fall in love, at which point everything is wiped. I'm not sure if it's a concept that comes from the Victorians in that way, or if I'm simply not as familiar with anything outside of Victorian to midcentury kidlit.