If you could, you would want to condense it all down, mash it together and release the awesome power of the Experience, devour it in one sitting. You'd probably like to relive the whole thing in one day, one hour, one minute if you could. If you had to have it, if it filled you up like some chemical, and seeing it was the only True Release you'd experienced in years, then you'd do whatever you could to personalize it, to capture it and lock it away, to take mental stock of the images and sounds, make it easy for replay later.
You'd want to, but it's impossible.
The Wanderers, they are out here on a whim, some accidental shove by society and they land all around the globe - tramping without so much as a windsock. The Believers, they look for it - specific, everlasting glory. They exercise faith in the Beauty, truths lying below layers of shells and obsidian sand. Their purpose is The Purpose.
I'm not either of those. Call me an Amnesiac.
They used to say that we're immortal beings, that one life just starts up when the last one runs out, and that the process of birth is so painful and terrible that it wipes our memory. Therefore, we have no recollection of any of the past things we've seen or done, even though we've been alive since the dawn of time. Pure mathematics and Common Reasoning has dashed this idea against the rocks, but it lives and breathes, if you give it room.
But maybe I'm too dumb for that. Maybe, if it's there, then I'm tapped into it because I'm lacking the motor-neuron development to push it aside. And hell, while we're at it, the Natives have some damn good ideas about the symbolism and function of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Earth. Much better than those fucks who bet against the stocks I own. Off the path I go, pull it back. It's too easy, too ignorant to push knowledge away, to say that a culture spent their entire existence believing and practicing something, but somehow we know better, so there you go, fuck off and we'll catch you on the dark side.
I'm tapped into it because I think I forget this shit too easily, and I need to record every moment, to somehow make it relevant in the future, as well as the here and now. It's not just images, it's the whole scene, the whole feel. The worst thing I can do is go back and work some dogshit job, clutching my fleeting memories of the Waves and the Gold Hue. But it's even worse to struggle to maintain it, only to lose it in the flush of Human Drama that exists throughout the entire American landscape. Goddamn it, there's not enough time for HALF of this shit, so why all the talk?
If we're going to do it, then let's walk right into the fucking surf, meet the monster on its territory and fuck telling the story. If I'm having a problem remembering the specifics of the bluish-green sway of the inlet, then I'm going to have to just go the fuck to another place, a better one, and define my life that way. It can never go away if it can't hide. And if I have to flush it out by ratcheting up the meter to Full Go, then so be it, I'll be that.
There's enough people in this world who are content to see what movie is TV tonight and live the Fake Life, through other people who may or may not even be real.
How do you prepare a face to meet the other faces that you meet? What if we can't connect, what if the sensors aren't lining up? What if this is the true drug, the opiate not of the masses but of the One? The one thing that causes all light and shadow to meld, the Brain Breaker, the breezes carrying ominous warnings of slipping thoughts and dying melodies?
It's not changing, because that would be to isolate it and make it separate from the rest of the world, which doesn't ever stop changing. But it's growing. The push and the pull, the sea singing back and forth, eternity staring right into your face - you with your petty concepts of time and space - this spiritual enigma is growing and exposing more and more.
I'm not a Convert yet, but only because I might be too stupid for it just now. But I'm on the list, and they'll be visiting my house more often in the future.
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