Already, the other day is quickly becoming the past, and as the past, it's no longer fresh in my mind. I'm very busy, hoping to document the details of it before it completely fades from memory. I might need to skip the next few days entirely just to dwell on it in order to accentuate its features more and hopefully keep its memory alive.
Of course I'm very happy that I had that time of imagination; I'm talking about my imaginary visit to Skidrow. But how to preserve and rightfully commemorate it, that is my struggle at this time. For it's those special times that make life worth it, times of inspiration and decisiveness, times of insight and the mind's grandeur. Not like ordinary time. You think of ordinary time and what is it? Solitaire and eating apricots? Stoking the fire? Bringing in the mail? A glass of water? Barely a fit memory in the bunch!
Let's say the next few days are ordinary days. If I take those days and dedicate them to memory of the other day I might keep it closer. Like by studying and making note of that day. What I ate. How I was sitting when the inspiration hit. What the weather was like. How freely the inspiration flowed. If I knew everything about it -- which I will seek to know -- then I might more likely be able to repeat it when I look at the present and see the same conditions. Today's not one of those days. That's why I'm lurching from topic to topic, barely able to find the right word. But that day -- we'll call it inspired -- I was in the grip of something powerful, really thinking the thoughts that are not ordinarily given over to men.
Am I proud of that day? Am I proud of that piece? Well, I do feel proud, but let me back up a minute. Even more I feel humbled, just as I said a moment ago, that I was in the grip of something powerful, and, therefore, wasn't even really myself entirely. I was the tool of higher forces that seem like they were going to have their way whether I was the instrument in their hands or someone else. To be chosen like that, then, is a humbling thing, leaving our ordinary feelings of pride very far behind.
Also, I've paid something of a price for that day. I don't know if you've ever had a day like that. But one thing that happens is that you want to recapture it. You want to remember it in such detail, and preserve it to such an extent that you even seek to give up living in the present moment. You become very past-oriented, to the extent that the precious experiences of life in this moment are wasted. You're always chasing that first high, as it were. And it takes more and more hours in the days following than ever were spent in that first moment. Like this thing with me, it seems like I ought to be able to recapture it very well; I have the same mind, the same heart. What's the hold up? The higher forces? Perhaps, but I'm thinking of them as really just another dimension of myself that is generally obscure. I'm not really thinking of them as higher forces, like some kind of little winged creatures bestowing imagination on me.
Probably what I should be doing is simply letting that other day be past. And instead of chasing its great high, be striving with my imagination toward other glories. With the idea in that being to make all time transformed, worthwhile. To forget the past, then, to remember it? No, not to forget but not to worry about remembering. To make this moment the time in which I excel, then to excel in such a great way that I need to spend three days worrying about this latter time rather than the previous time. I'll know it was worthwhile when it's something that blocks me as this time has, then has to be overcome.
Well, today was definitely a thought piece. And a necessary one. Now I have a choice to make. Do I press on toward new imaginary ventures? Or do I fixate so firmly on the last one that my life becomes a shrine to its memory?
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