Amnesiac

[Ariel]

(Inspired by the album of the same name by Radiohead.)-In the light morning fog of mid-spring, the downtown area wakes up and the sun rises lazily. The first signs of movement dot the streets with each pedestrian standing out distinctly.Up above hazy figures can be seen stirring in the few open windows.I drift without thoughts or emotions, just sense impressions.I observe as if in reverie.The fog that’s disappearing outside seems to be seeping into me.-For a long time - I’m not sure if for days or for months - I haven’t really recorded any impressions.I don’t think, therefore I don’t exist. I’ve forgotten who I am. Through some oblique sleep, I’ve become someone else. To realize I don’t remember myself means that I’ve woken up.I return to myself without remembering what I’ve been, and the memory of what I used to be suffers after being cut off from my life. I have cloudy impressions of a mysterious interlude; part of my memory is trying to find the other part in vain. I can’t pull myself together. If I’ve lived during this time, I forgot to be aware of it.Somewhere within this interlude of lost things there is a pale trace of useless memories. Abstract imagery and symbols. Colors.No. It’s more painful than that.It’s an intense melancholy of trying to remember what can not be recalled. An anguish over what my consciousness has lost among the seaweed and debris along the shores of who knows where.-(Anonymous caress of slumber.)Church bells strike what I know must be eight o’clock. The noise of the day rises with the bells. I awaken from myself because of the banality of measured time, a border to contain the abstract, a boundary around the unknown. I notice the fog which has entirely quit the air has indeed penetrated the depths of my soul. I’ve lost the vision of what I was seeing. I’ve begun to perceive things with the banality of knowledge.The cold light of the morning now glimmering like an apocalyptic torment.What I see is no longer reality. Just life. An image in the absolute.I turn and walk slowly, though faster than I think, to the door that will lead me back up to the hotel. Advancing slowly, lifelessly, and my vision is no longer mine. Memory no longer anything but a nothingness that breathes. A deep forgetting that massages the tissues of my soul.