We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death. But they are in fact constantly renewed, and the great events of our lives happen again and again.
"…is the tendency for adults over forty to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood."
1w ago
The thing that astonishes me is that the same images, the same landscapes, return each night with such fidelity. They must exist somewhere.
Nostalgia can be a toxic impulse, reactionary and uncritical, but it can also hold revolutionary potential for the future. Here, nostalgia is more than a self-soothing search for comfort; it's about engaging with loss, reconnecting with ideals that might improve the future.
2w ago
We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.
I suspect that such forgettings occur for everyone, and they may be especially common in those who write or paint or compose, for creativity may require such forgettings, in order that one's memories and ideas can be born again and seen in new contexts and perspectives.
The great challenge, the great triumph, is to make of memory an instrument of presence.
2mo ago
We do not remember days, we remember moments. The gods, not being human, have mercifully forgotten the days and the years, the stretch of foul weather and the long dull reaches of our lives, and have retained only the bright moments: thus our lives are high-lighted and dramatic with the deus ex machina and the tragedy of unforeseen events.
2mo ago
We do not remember days, we remember moments. The gods, not being human, have pleasantly forgotten the days and the years of the universe and have kept only a few moments of beauty wherewith to refresh themselves.
The biggest difference is not that OpenClaw can answer questions. Plenty of systems can do that. The more interesting difference is that it can carry context forward in a way that feels less disposable.
The tissue was just hanging there, loose and slack. My skin had seemingly doubled in size. It was drooping, deflated. I'd never seen anything like it, until I realized I had. It looked like the leg of my grandfather when he was 90 years old.
Very few people ever really are alive and those that are never die; no matter if they are gone. No one you love is ever dead.
3mo ago
The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.
4mo ago
The mind is like a vast library in which the books are in constant flux—some volumes fade into obscurity while others suddenly illuminate corners previously left in shadow, and the librarian himself is often the last to know what treasures or horrors his collection contains.
Before the electrodes were attached to his head he'd lost everything tangible: money, property, children; even his rights as a citizen had been taken away from him by order of the court…. I will never know all that was in his head at that time, nor will anyone else. What's left now is just fragments: debris, scattered notes, which can be pieced together but which leave huge areas unexplained.
5mo ago
The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
5mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
