my body is a tomb

so tired. still at work. the hours drag, and i'm slouching heavily (almost horizontal) in this chair.

this morning, whilst sitting in a lecture my supervisor was taking, my neurons were firing, and i knew what i wanted to write here. i took a few notes - let's see what i can make of them.

i wrote "my body is a tomb"

she mentioned Schilder (see last post) and the body schema. and i thought about how things live and die in my memory. the traces remain; or not. my body remembers things; or forgets. or thinks it remembers but may have it wrong. because my memories are impure and form around my interactions with others, and their words, ideas, memories, touch. i have many phantoms.

she talked about the necessity to discard things in order to take in new things. we can't know everything. we can't be everything. so we sort, limit, and shift. we move in order to transcend. so that we can continue the process of becoming. a friend recently wrote (or maybe i wrote it to him) "just keep moving". it makes more sense today.

lately i've been thinking about old emails, and how i wanted to save, catalogue, preserve them. but they are dead. they weren't sent or received by the me of today, but yesterday. and he is long gone, half-forgotten, dull. better to dream about the emails still to come.

this week i was invited to a reunion-style gathering in october. the thought of it sent a shiver up my spine. the invite arrived from an ex who moves slower than i do, in the sense that she lives upon her memories, wishes to reignite traces, talks of times past. and this i find sad. memories can be nice, but surely the more you prop yourself up with them the more you cease to be here now. it's tomorrow that counts. and i point my desires towards tomorrow.

not that i wish to erase things. i like the traces. i like the rings that form around my tree trunk self. they give me character, remind me of my growth, they give me the shape that i find myself in today. but they do not nourish me, like the soil and the air.

in the lecture, my supervisor also spoke of the alienation that can come with being the only educated person in the family. that's me. but it's not just family - it's some friends too. and it's my ex, whose invite i haven't responded to.

this week i finished Crime and Punishment. i tingle each time i recall the following line: "seven years, only seven years!" and for this reason, on the basis of this statement and the context in which it falls (i can't give it away - read the book!), i know that i can't go to this gathering. i know the direction of my desires.

and i know not to attend for the sake of being nice.