10:15

People remember events differently. Most people are disposed to winding their memories and senses together in a braided tress, not unlike their mother’s macrame hanger or grandmother’s garlic rope. Our senses act as a catalog, a reminder or even a storage space for things our consciousness tags as important to remember.

And to each individual the infusion of senses into events varies in ingredients, strength and vigour. Those among us blessed with pitch and an ear for life will often wrap a memory in a song, creating a new and distinct work that echo’s the original but, like a virtuoso taking up his instrument to perform, will exceed the original composer’s intent. Those who’s nose acts as a window into the world, will add the memory as an ingredient into the aroma of their favourite dish or establish a new amalgam from such things as a warm summer’s eve or the scent of their daughter’s hair. Sight, touch, taste, all the traditional senses make the perfect packaging for those thoughts and feelings that we choose not to forget, and many that we would not so happily choose as well.

But not all memories are of the body. Not all events can be encapsulated and entwined in things real and tangible. For some, the senses were never strong enough to hold such monumental perceptions, for others it is the singularity of an event, the razor sharp clarity that prevents its adulteration by any of the traditional five.

So how then does the mind classify and catalog such memories? For some, for all too many and all too long, the only answer the psyche can offer is to hold it always in the forefront, to never store or file or move the moment from the immediate consciousness. This state, in this unending form, exemplifies the most common definition of hell for its adherents, a never-ending retelling, that no matter how pleasant in its original, will soon become an overearly and inescapable purgatory.

And sometimes, when the mind cannot continue in its self-inflicted misery, or if it could not ever grasp an event enough to even form the memory, the mind will wrap it in layer upon layer encysting it like scar tissue around a foreign body. There is no memory, no truth, no reality attached to it and our conscious and subconscious selves hold it forever separate and apart, attached yet inaccessible.

But even these arms length creations remain in orbit around us. We feel the effects of their gravitational pull and they can push and pull our moods and thoughts like tides. And they too must somehow be accounted for and tracked by the deepest and most elusive nodes of our secret selves. Philosophers, and scientists alike, writers, dreamers and believers have long felt that there are more things around us that can be be cataloged by the senses or perceived by the accepted modes. Some way, somehow, our minds can perceive and account for the unknown, storing that knowledge in an unknowable place and deriving reason and sense for the effects of the indiscernible. Something that is of us, yet beyond us acts to monitor and control the effects of that which we have sent into exile and acts as a guardian and castellan, something hidden must exist to protect us from ourselves.

There are many ways in which we build our selves, but the strongest building blocks are those we experience and adopt into our souls. Our memories are precious and requisite, without them we would not grow or learn or be able to contribute new and ever-unique truths to our worlds. But not all memories are bricks; some, and every soul alive has them, are flames. Fires that destroy and immolate everything they touch and can rarely coexist safely with the true structure of our selves. Some memories exist only to harm and it is a sad sad day indeed when a mind lets open the fiery gates and sets free the conflagration one anyone’s soul.