half a page of scribbled lines

I'm terrified of forgetting.

I am a hermit in a cave, somewhere in a burning forest, and I am terrified. Not that I will burn or that I will die—those are easy ideas to accept—but that I will forget. Every thought I have, every feeling, every word—all gone, ashes, like the red leaves in the red flames outside my cosy little cave.

My mind has always been my greatest asset—I am a hermit, after all, in this extended metaphor, dreaming and writing and thinking—I have never had anything else, but I can feel it slipping away now, sand through my fingers. I slip away; the words of a poem that forms itself in your head when you're half asleep, too far away from pen or ink.

And this is terrifying to me, not because I ascribe incredible importance to my own thoughts or words, but who am I if I cannot remember the things I think? Does a person exist if they don't know who they are? I really, really want to exist.

So I'm writing now. Not everything I have ever thought or felt, but some of it at least, to begin with—because I am so, so afraid of being forgotten, and maybe it's monkey-brain librarian instinct, the human tendency to write things down that's made me this way. Whatever it is, I Have To Do This. 

I don't want to forget—and I know there's a lot that could be said about living in the moment, you don't have to remember or document or record everything, ephemerality and learning to let go and all of that—but I don't know how to do that.

I don't know how to do any of that, and maybe I will someday, and maybe I won't need to write like this anymore. Maybe then I can write other things, things that aren't so fuelled by the desperate, existential desire to be. Maybe. 

But until then, I guess I am writing now. Well, I always have—like breathing, like speaking—but this is new, all the existential bullcrap. And I guess that's what all this is then—my own half a page of scribbled lines. 

(The Pink Floyd song I lifted that line from is, fittingly enough, about oblivion and the passage of time as well. What a remarkable coincidence.)

The time is gone, the song is over,

Thought I'd something more to say...

(Art: Peasant Burning Weeds, 1883, by Vincent Van Gogh)

—

I had just finished playing Firewatch when I wrote this. Hence the burning forest metaphor, I think. Forgetting has always been terrifying to me, though, especially now that it seems to be happening more and more often. And I've always loved Time (except the beginning. I know it's genius and all that, but it's hard not to get bored of listening to a bunch of bells and chimes for however long that goes on for. Oh, well).