Prologue
Almost two months ago I broke the silence that had laid across this blog with a poem: Unwind—Wind or Nevermind. This Time I Think I’ll Try Rewind.
The post you are reading now is the stream-of-consciousness piece from which the poem arose. Much of this piece formed during a four-hour car ride I took solo down to the family place in Virginia for a weekend of helping my dad with some chores and construction projects.
The poem started to take form Saturday evening of that weekend, and being more insistent to be birthed, was mostly complete after my four-hour drive home on Sunday. Apparently I can get a lot of writing done when I’m alone in a car listening to music for four hours.
This prose piece came together shortly after. Less structured nor to as specific a point compared to the poem, this required a little more refinement. However, it was the audio portion of this piece that caused the seven-week gap. I can’t say I regret taking the time to get the recording to a point where I am OK releasing it, but I had wanted these to be published closer to each other because I consider them companion pieces.
There is a third piece yet to come, but that one is already written and the audio completed, it being shorter and easier than this one—which is amusing to me because it started as a part of this piece, but morphed into something larger that didn’t fit neatly into the story below.
Certain themes carry across the three pieces, but tell different stories.
Or maybe they tell the same story differently.
Most likely, it’s something a bit between the two.
I hope that, once expelled from me, my mind will be satisfied. That when divested of these spiraling concepts, perhaps I can return to the simple peace of writing about substance information and word (mis)use. I’m already working on pieces about each of those topics.
But for now, once more unto the breach, dear friends!
Or, rather than listening to it all in one piece, each chapter has it’s own audio right there in that chapter.
Here’s the audio of the entire post, all chapters, in one go. Not as necessary or useful as it was for Part 1, but I like being consistent, and I got to do some fun things with it as well as practice a new skill! If you do listen, I recommend doing so in stereo.
Chapter 1
My Journey Backwards
I’ve been delving into myself a lot recently, trying to figure out the patterns and routines of my mind. I’m catching lightning. Playing with alchemy. Winding back clocks to foundational moments to observe them play out and leave their scars.
It’s been an illuminating quest, for certain. I am amazed, perhaps more surprised, by how much of me—of my reactions, my behaviors, my essence—I can trace back to the root. It’s fascinating, though perhaps not surprising, how easily a string can guide a wanderer through the labyrinth. I had always assumed that following the string would prove the Herculean challenge.
When in truth, the challenge may well be realizing that there is a string at all…and one worth following at that! And that is why you send Theseus into the labyrinth to fight the minotaur and not Hercules (or Herakles in the original Greek).
But if there is value to be had in these explorations, that is yet unknown. Seeing the gears grinding in the clockwork figure might reveal its motivation, but the seeing doesn’t change the turning. The clockwork man lumbers onward, course preset and fixed, despite the intrusion into those inner workings.
That said, I know that seeing my patterns can help me break them…or at least bump my behavior in a different direction. It has before.
Chapter 2
Changing the Logic of Me
I used to think myself a creature of logic. Then I realized logic—beyond math equations or puzzles—is too mutable. Rarely can a decision be distilled down to pure logic, not when humans are involved. What is logical for me might not be for someone else because we are, each of us, a mess of unknowable variables.
But armed with Logic, I could not be moved from certain stances and beliefs. lf I could explain my choices from a place of Logic, I had the high ground, the superior position. Any other opinion must therefore be tainted with Emotion, and so have a weak foundation.
Our own Logic becomes circular: It is logical because it is. And because I say it is Logic and use a logical rhetoric and you don’t have a mind for such pattern recognition and cannot craft your logical counter, then I declare victory!
In truth, that declaration is simply proof that I didn’t care to see things from the Other perspective. To see the Other logic, just as valid as my own had I not blinded myself to that truth.
I don’t do that anymore, or I try not to. It was an easy way for me to Be Right. I should have Been Better.
Chapter 3
Ghosts of Me and You
My journey inward/backward has not been a solo pilgrimage. As I coddiwomple through the corridors of memories, hundreds of ghosts drift alongside me. Some with the faces and voices of loved ones who have passed beyond the ken of my existence here. Others…not so cut and dry in their distinction.
You are amongst them. Does that surprise you? Did you think you wouldn’t be? Here you are, reading/listening to this chapter, and thus you have become a character in the book of me. There’s more to tell of that tale—to the tale of us—but not here and now. That will be the next story.
So let’s ignore that tangent, that shade of you, and for now, let me rewind….
Others…not so cut and dry in their distinction.
Many of these ghosts are me. Other mes separated from each other at crucial points of divergence through my life,..or should that be our lives? Some are a version of me that existed decades ago, maybe even just for a day—or less!—but I was him once, and him me, if but for a moment. Among these many duplicates are mes that never were, and now, through circumstance, can never be.
And those others, over there? The various versions of myself that exist in other people’s stories, including yours: the me you think of when/if you should do so. They are incomplete and imprecise reflections—but all true. And all of them hazy. They could be less so. Less flimsy, less translucent and windswept. I could do that, shore up those wane specters and give them greater form and boldness simply by opening, by revealing more of myself to those who birthed those malformed shadows of me.
But opening is, by its nature, an act of destruction.
Chapter 4
This Memory Mine
My brain doesn’t work like others’ seem to. It clings to facts and figures and knowledge; I’ve amused/annoyed Erin with revelations of physics in recent weeks and blathered on in a chat about things I learned in high school chemistry. Information that I could not let go, details about the workings of the world that may be interesting, but are entirely unnecessary for my existence.
I suppose that means some part of me, that silent, deep part of the mind that forms and guides our actions without our input—that part found these unnecessary facts more deserving of saving than the memories of my life. And therefore, more important than myself. For what are we but memories within our minds or the minds of others?
Or was it the other way round? That it is now upon the inspection of the accumulated memorabilia of my journey as Me, that I have realized I saved meticulous notes but few souvenirs.
My childhood? Discarded so that I can know that it is grammatically correct to use just an apostrophe (rather than the full apostrophe-s) for people’s names that end in s—BUT only for Biblical names (Jesus’ cross and Moses’ staff as opposed to Jess’s book). And this rule came to be because the Bible was the first books printed en masse on printing presses, and there are only so many little metal Ss in the tray. Rather than buy more, let’s change the rules of grammar.
The ebbs and flows of language have ever been as mutable as that: for profit.
Chapter 5
My Ever Drifting Now
I am too easily distracted by things unless I am far too engrossed in a thing, so fully immersed that the passage of time and bodily signals indicating biological necessity are removed from my awareness. When at last I drag myself back out of that song or book or bit of writing or casual thought, it is then that the weight of my lapses comes crashing down. I am numb. Stiff. Hungry. Thirsty. Cold. In desperate need for evacuation. Hours have passed and I wonder if there was something else that I should have been doing instead of…that.
Whatever that was. It was so important then, but now…gone. If only I could rewind. Just a moment, rewind just a moment and maybe I could reclaim it. But that was not a gift given to me, not this time around.
Maybe it winds backward or forward or maybe it turtles all the way down. Nevermind. Nevermind. It’s not worth following me (t)here.
Instead, onto the next. Yes! The next!
But which is next, I never can tell. I pick up a Thing. It might have been the only Thing, but was it the right Thing?
Conversely: It might have been the right Thing, but was it the only Thing? It goes both ways—all ways!—and always has, as you can(not) see(. Not) when you face just one direction at a (in) time.
Was it the right Thing? Or even the Right thing?
Rarely it seems because there is ever another task that should have been my focus. A better place to have pushed my time and energy. Because I’m never satisfied with how I spent the hours behind me. I could have done…MORE…with each.
The moments I regret the least are the ones spent making my wife happy.
Though, in that mix there are so many hours that were paid toward that endeavor that could have been put to more lucrative work still toward that same goal had I just—and see? Never satisfied!
Chapter 6
My Divergence
I’ve only recently started to come to grips with the various ways that I think sideways—or maybe that’s umop apisdn, it’s hard to say for certain once everything’s gone cattywampus. All the oddities and the great many initialisms used to codify my neurodivergence (to use the parlance of our times—nevermind).
No olfactory memory for one. A simple one for sure, and unnecessary in the grand scheme. But one that seems so strange to others: “How can smells not conjure memories?” I didn’t keep the memories. The scent is a path to nowhere. A cliff’s edge and no passage remains to the far side. But I somehow synesthetically exchanged scent for sound in this arena. It is songs that provoke the greatest meaning and send me plunging back in time and dredge forth such raw, bittersweet remembrances. Songs that make me…rewind.
Difficulty focusing, sitting still, keeping thoughts trapped behind my teeth during those moments when that is the best place for them to reside. And when they cannot slip out over the tongue, they escape through the fingers and morph into symbols depicting sounds so that eyes can replace ears as the victim of my assault.
For this, I can only apologize. Again. I have no control. At least you can walk away. I’m trapped with(in) me.
But let’s rewind. Ring the bell and try again. A sure thing this time, right, Mr. Ives? Sorry for the tangent. Nevermind.
Despite my propensity for producing them now, long ago I had trouble making sense of the symbols-depicting-sounds-that-represent-everything that were scrawled all over the pages of books.
I lacked the ability to stay here and now and present when such a vibrant playground existed in my mind. It was so easy
to
drift
off.
When I am evaluated against a mold that was not used to form me, there is but one score, though I know many ways to say it: Flawed. Broken. Misbegotten. Wretched.
To the rack with him! Unwind unwind unwind him back to component pieces and let him loose to form up again and let’s see how he looks this time.
Again and again and again. Until after enough (ENOUGH!), I was able to finally break free of those terrible shackles and smooth out the deformities. By excelling at hiding the outward symptoms of the parts of me that those authorities didn’t like.
Chapter 7
Measuring Me Against Perfection
Those bits of me, they weren’t shackles. Nor deformities. Not until they are framed against an idea of what a kid should be. And that, that mold, that concept of an ideal for how a child should look and act—as if there is one imagined perfection, or even ranges of acceptability to be considered perfect—that is the trauma upon all of us. The farther to the fringes we fall from that ideal, the worse the damage.
But it’s not only the distance from it that pains. No, it is also the awareness of our distance from it. In this, ignorance would be bliss.
That false visage of perfection never stops glouring. No matter the number of turns we wind around the sun, we can feel its eyes on us. Although at some point, we start to care less, or so it has seemed to me in those so much farther through this life.
Is this due to the wisdom that age brings? Or do we simply start to accept that we’ve slipped past that false idol and every year forward moves us ever farther from it. Because surely, surely perfection could not include someone of such advanced years. Of course it can’t. If it did, we’d venerate our elders and not rage against the passage of time as much as we do. When did we stop honoring the Crone, one full third of the threefold Goddess? Just another way we’ve lost our way.
We all have a sense of what Perfection should look like, were any of us to get close enough to see it in detail. Some delusional people think they can see it clearly, that they stand just a breath away from Perfection, and unsurprisingly they think it a mirror casting back their own image, or close enough to their own image that they would point and shout, “That’s me reflected in Perfection!” And so often it seems these outspoken larks aren’t even looking the right way, so lost are they in their self importance.
What do I see? A fading figment of a me that now, through circumstance, can never be. And in truth never was. Not even one of the ghosts. Not anymore. Nor nevermore…if you speak to raven. And why wouldn’t you? Seek thought! Seek memory! Seek Matthew!
No. No, nevermind. Let’s not hang from trees nor go down the path of runes nor through the Dreaming.
Let’s rewind so that I might try to find me again.
Chapter 8
I Am Words
I’m a creature of words. Frail words. Mine is a soul of ink and parchment, of old leather-bound tomes, of printing presses and typewriters and word processors. Made up, imaginary things, words. Would that I could communicate in small, wordless bursts of emotion and information. So much less, then, the pollution I would emit, either in wasted sound or wasted paper, those scraps of flesh carved from the corpses of trees.
Ever wasteful, me. Even when I seek to create art, I work with fire, metal, and striking hammer. I carve wood. Chisel stone. I break things, hoping to find something beautiful inside the shell. What hubris to think I could inflict improvements upon the world around me. That I could make something more beautiful by destroying it.
But opening is, by its nature, an act of destruction.
So then maybe if I swing this hammer with enough strength, hit the chisel enough times, I can crack myself open and find something of value deep inside. Would that I might unearth in me a gemstone heart, perhaps, or veins of mithril, or adamantium bones…no, no, no, no, not that.
A heart-shaped box? You’re reaching now. It’s a fun game! Let’s play: From heart-shaped box to heart-shaped glasses to emerald glasses that turn the city green (when really it’s the same color as any other city, but no one knows it) to somewhere over the rainbow to Bill Paxton in Twister to Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13.
A fun game indeed, to see how my mind skips from word to word, making tenuous connections. But that’s a train of thought headed to the wrong station. Rewind!
Would that I might unearth in me a gemstone heart; veins of mithril; a breath that imbues Motivation or a bit of lingering Stormlight; balancing weaves of the flame and the fang; a song for when a long summer turns to a long winter.
Some form of magic to help me focus. To be relevant. To stay present. If I continue untethered, I worry/hope that I’ll just Drift Away. I’ve done it before. Evaporated into blissful nonexistence. It was quiet for a time.
I was quiet for a time.
I think I prefer myself that way. But it doesn’t last. I am noise, after all. If lucky, it’s a kind of soft white noise in the distance, easily ignored and useful to help fall asleep.
I don’t do much of that, either. Never been good at it, sleep. Can take forever to fall asleep, so easy to wake, and to wake quickly and fully.
I recall sleep described as little slices of death. I’m not so sure. I think death is more complete and alien. An erasure or absorption of the current situation back to the eternal version of ourselves.
Those who die before they die will not die when they die. Or so the Elysian mysteries tell us. If sleep is like a tiny death, those words would never have needed to be spoken. For all of us would die almost daily, and that is a terrifying thought, that each night we close our eyes to die with nothing but a hope for resurrection at dawn.
Terrifying…but glorious! Moments of quiet. Of nonexistence. Of peace.
Chapter 9
Shall I Fly…or Fall?
So what comes next after a moment of nonexistence? Absolution? Erasure? Dissolution? Fragmentation?
What is next for me, now that I’ve torn myself to pieces and discovered only pieces of myself torn apart?
Here I am paused, hovering, between the abyss below and heavens above, both infinite and welcoming. Both full of possibility and wonderment and joy. This moment—be it measured in minutes, days, months, years—this is naught but a breath across the span of my infinite self.
No decision is daunting upon a scale measured in eons. But that makes it no less significant to the Now Me, because I do not measure my life in eons.
So significance it has, but not fear. No, that is quieted by the knowledge I won’t be alone. Friends, dear companions be they known or not yet met, ease my travels along both routes.
No matter the direct, up or down, with me throughout as we impart or withdraw momentum in tandem to keep pace with each other, my beloved Erin. Never alone along either course, me.
Will I fly or fall? Both, of course, but in unequal measure. I don’t yet know which wins this tug of war: The motivation derived from my own will or that forced upon me by the circumstance of my environment.
Fly or fall? It’s impossible to tell.
But a pause, by its nature, is a transient state and cannot last.