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always submerged and I don’t need to breathe
13 November 2008 - 15:02
Every place, location, surrounding I inhabit washes over me like a tidal wave. The strong silhouettes of Douglas-firs through the gauzy curtain of my sunlit yellow kitchen are the only things that exist when I look at them, the only things that ever have existed; they strip my world of maps. Each memory of a place -- the first time I saw Lake Tahoe I didn't see it; it was at night, and we stopped at a scenic viewpoint, and there was only new moon blackness and the scent of Jeffrey Pines and an yawning, majestic emptiness that had to be the 1,600-foot deep lake; this memory resurfaces randomly (right now, for example), and I don't know why it haunts me...
Each memory of a place washes out my present gaze, becomes TOTAL. It's not a different time, or a physical place plotted in relation to this one; you can't measure this distance in miles or hours. Rather each memory (and each new experience) constitutes another scene, another state of consciousness, an utter encapsulation (if you can be encapsulated the same way you can be doused...).
A plane ride adds to the incongruity I sense at the heart of migration, but even a 19-hour drive to a "faraway" destination could not, could not ever, convince me that a change in location is not some sort of magic trick.
