Memory Icicle
4:06 PM,
First was a low cinderblock wall to climb over. Then it was up the scattering rock and dirt of the steep hill -- a winding path that traced an almost invisible contour. To the rock.
It was big, like the thick rounded head of some balding giant made of earth and stone. No weeds or grass growing, just that sun-heated curve. Sitting there you could see over the rooftops of the neighborhood. Sitting there you could imagine the rock to be hollow, a mysterious cave filled with dinosaur bones or other secrets. Sitting there...years in the past.
Minutes past the late afternoon hour of four: caffeine clarity.
The water is so cold now, pipes chilled by winter imparting a shivery perfection to a long deep drink. Soothing fluidity. Snowflakes falling can almost look like water flowing. Perhaps there is some mathematical composition that patterns the visuality of both.
Snow falling from the midnight sky is a lovely algorithm.
I wonder if there are physical structures that are evocative of sounds. Perhaps a building, designed in a certain way, would call to mind a certain musical passage. Moving through the hallways and rooms could generate a rhythm. An atrium: an aria.
I wonder if there is a music to memory...
Then again, memory is thought and music is thought made audible, like a building is an idea made solid. These words are my thoughts made visible. In a song, Laurie Anderson says: "I can see the future and it’s a place -- about 70 miles east of here. Where it’s lighter. Linger on over here. Got the time?"
It is 5:08 PM, hello from January in the year 2000.
Today was bright like memory, like light through an icicle.
--- JWR, 1/6/00