On Forgetting and (on off chance) Remembrance

An investigation into the mind

On Forgetting, and (on the off chance) Remembrance

Of earth and heaven's wonder �" of soaring hawks and buzzing bees, the latter kept aloft by strange aerodynamic laws �" of ceaselessly combusting stars and dancing celestial bodies and chasms of darkness hungering for light and life and warmth, and will exert all gravitational powers to have these pleasures and hold them close in their hidden shadowy bellies. Of mechanical masterpieces and award-worthy theses composed of prose that'd shame this measly conjurance. Of it all there exists nothing more frail or frightening, magical or strangely delighting, than the human mind and its intricate inner workings.

I'm in awe of the mechanism that enables this expressive medium, the tool with which I express my burgeoning awe to readers I don't know, and never shall. Delightful still further is my power to enjoy my own intelligence and use it to examine itself, like a mirror looking inward and reflecting back its own expansive beauty. A maddening ability, this, for the harder one looks the more one finds to look at. I can easily get stuck in my own labyrinthine mind maze.

So instead I direct it outwards, peering through my body's eyes to soak up sights seen by never truly touched; I absorb the stimuli and accept the readily provided interpretation that seems to be almost divinely inspired. Or I reject the interpretation and use my mind as the tool of reasoning it is, working upon the stimuli until the truth flowers before me, or something interesting emerges, with colors and logic of depths and leagues beyond me.

Such is the mind: a capable hammer to break the world into bites of savory directional information to steady the wobbly step. Just as well the mind builds castles of discovered truths and inspiration gotten from who knows where or why or how. These castles stand and leer before the year-gnarled face of time, refusing to perish with the mind that was their maker. Instead they adopt a new host to nurture them, this mind sharper and wiser, a better tool �" perhaps wielded by a better man? He unborn, bridled with awesome potential borrowed from the great and buried minds that paved his walkway.

Its valuable in degrees immesurable, plentiful and yet in every store unpurchasable. And when it dries and leaves but fond memories behind, the mind is a gift irreplacable. It's a gift given freely to every child, every man and every crone footing senility's slippery slope. It's given without expectation of compensation or guarantee of its proper and fittingly grateful usage.

An emotion cousin of disgust coils anxiously in my gut when I chance to behold a wasted mind, decommissioned before its time, gathering dust while it dreams of glorious castles to be built while it sits and meanders. If I could I'd shoulder the burden of nurture and remembrance for those too weak or ill or lazy to tend their own goddamn gardens. I'd gather the full toolbox of hammers and build a civilization of castles and let all reap the amenities that I sweat and bled and thought over, me relishing just in their creation as an artist does. Such a task is grand enough to perk my ear and widen my heart, so swollen with love for human faculty and gratitude for the Muse. But alas, the mind's nurture takes all of one's days, and even then the job isn't quite done right.

All that's left is to try and try to broaden the scope of human awareness as within one's power, as one's duty. The foot-forward charge on unmapped terrain towards understanding, seized from the clutches of head-scrunching labor, draws me and calls me like a lover; further, the mission to break this understanding down into savory bites more easily digested is my goal, what wakes me and soothes me to sleep.

The next generation of ape-descended mind-wielders have my hopes and prayers: first that they use their tool, second that they make good use of the castles their ancestors labored and sacrificed their minds and lives for. I pray against the squandrance of our efforts. I pray they recognize our sacrifice. But mostly I pray for the day when mind-work will no longer seem to me a sacrifice; when unencumbered thought will bring pleasure akin to wine and sex and love, and men can whistle while they whittle away at their masterpieces, worryless of other's gratitude or lack of, contently indulged in their art without care for the world as it churns and burns behind them.

This prayer eases my days and softens the night.

Author's Note

Tell me what you think! :)