Sitting at an outdoor coffee shop, endlessly skeptical of this outdoor café thing but taking the chance on just coffee. The Starbucks was as crowded as it could be but this place is empty. You see, I know the neighborhood. I know the quaint places.
I have been talking to myself lately, sometimes right out loud, but mostly I whisper the words as I wrote them into a small composition book. Like a verbal palimpsest.
I generally can not stand to read my own writing. The words just seem to dangle, to hang in the air like meat in a freezer, waiting for a boxer-in-training to come and pound the shit out of them.
I don’t’ know why I bother, but I heard a comment on the radio that seemed to align with my ambivalence. Someone on the radio said that she wrote her words out on paper “in case anyone needs them.” She was talking about a family history story that she thought needed to be told, but she didn’t seem to know any family members who might care any more.
I am writing these words in case anyone needs them. That’s what I will tell myself from now on. It might give me a sense of purpose, which is something that has been lacking in my mumblings to self.
I have been reading at Julian Jaynes’ “Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” I read at it years ago but didn’t get far. It seems surprisingly readable to me now, or maybe I’m just not as intimidated. The subject matter coincides with my recent mental adventures into memory, and human beings’ task of remembering what to remember. Coincidentally I met somebody studying to be a forensic psychologist last week, and later realized that the Jaynes book is probably basic reading material for that field. So maybe we’ll bond on that matter when next we meet.
I got kinda weepy last night watching the Romanian marathon winner stride to victory in Beijing. It looked heroic, the sole winner so far ahead of the rest, striding through the empty city streets like a conquerer but also supremely vulnerable at that point to collapse or failure.
