Rabbit Holes and Buckets of Gold

OxBaker
Originally uploaded by stupidtool.

I've got this kinda' head game I like to play with myself. Following, sleuthing my way around in my past, I let myself remember a very specific place that I haven't thought about in a long time. For some reason it usually starts off with a parking lot, somewhere, that used to be a frequent stop in my past's day-to-day habits. I sometimes visualize these places out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, but when they stick I latch on. I let this memory of a forgotten place link into some other related place or person . . . whatever's near there, things that happened, whoever was with me . . . these secondary memories usually allow access to even deeper, more forgotten thoughts. And down into my head I go, thinking back things that haven't touched my consciousness in decades. The visual images are the easiest to chain because they are related spatially, but emotional similarities and other unknown factors make interesting and inexplicable connections too. It's important to immediately refuse any commonly recalled item, as in this particular game they are pennies compared to hundred dollar bills.

They say the brain holds the sensation of everything it has ever experienced. It even retains the stuff that didn’t take front stage as a focused and realized perception. Every sound that has been made within your earshot, every visual stimulus that has bounced a light wave into your retina, every particle that has rebounded off your skin . . . they are all filed, stored and accounted for inside the grey, water-logged meat inside your skull.