Day: January 20, 2016

From time to time I hear the sound of engines.  Big ones.  It seems as if they shake the room, shake the air.  It sounds almost like a huge machine idling nearly.  I hear it sometimes when I’m going to sleep, and when i shake my head to listen closer, it vanishes.

One night it had me wondering as I drifted off to sleep, if this wasn’t all an illusion.  If the noise was perhaps the only real part of this experience, as I lay dreaming in my stasis pod, drifting among the stars.  Rocked to sleep by the sound of mighty engines.

 

You are reading this.  Your eyes scan the lines of text word by word, and assemble them into meaning.  A collection of shapes agreed upon to make sounds which transform into language, thoughts, dreams and ideas.

Who is reciting this to you?  Who is that voice you hear who is reading out these words as if reading a story to a young child?  Is it a man? A woman?  Are they old, or young?  Do they have an accent, or a manner of speaking?  Is it you?  Are you sure?

Certainly that voice isn’t the same all the time.. it is an impressive mimic.  It sings you that song you heard on the radio last week.  It plays back the conversation you had with your boss, with your lover, with your ex-best friend.  It speaks to you in the voice of your parents, your peers, and your worst enemies.  Sometimes it lavishes you with previous praise.  Sometimes it cuts you down with a remembered slight made fresh.

Is that really you? It’s certainly not your conscious mind — why would you run so far out of control, like a hyperactive child who refuses to go down for a nap?  Your subconscious?  Who is that then?  It doesn’t have the same goals as you, certainly not the same motivations.  You can’t make it be quiet on command, nor in many important moments.

This stranger in your head, who are they?  That voice, when it’s not reciting something back to you like a parrot – whose voice is that? Would you recognize it if you heard it on the outside?

I’ve wondered if this voice doesn’t yell, or scream in fact at some people.  Nothing says this voice is (or is bound to be) benign.  Is that really you thinking that thought, or just listening and accepting?

 

I was hoping to find a few items and place them here.  I went back through almost the whole year, and I found a lot of moments that resonated.  Remembering how much I appreciate friends.  All of the printers I made.  The bears that wandered into our backyard to eat, then wrestle, and finally be captured by conservation officers, and taken away to be killed.  My last moments with my cat shamus, after I brought him in to the vet for the last time, just ahead of the cancer eating him alive.

I did not find the bits I expected to find however, and so I’m going to place them into the next few posts.  I don’t know why they didn’t surface, perhaps they were bigger in my head than I ever wrote down?