Think of The Past, Think of The Present; Think On...

The past is a crowded space. I've been blessed with almost total recall: some might consider it a curse, but I love it. I can still see, hear and sometimes even smell [that last is random in recollection, but it is nevertheless there] places, people and events from most of my long life, going deep, back into childhood. Even dream states from that childhood [blog posts passim] are occasionally brought forward into daily consciousness, sometimes at will, but more often than not by some external stimulus, which can be as random as the smell of the hedgerows, the sound of crows, or an email from someone from years past, now staying in touch as one old person to another, but connecting one teenage mind to the other through time's distant lens into the present, the intervening time falling away before it.

The wonderful thing about having [almost] total recall is the ability to [almost] relive the past in my mind's eye, sometimes quite literally viscerally. This is not about nostalgia so much as the conflation of a long and complex life into a kind of internal movie of that life, episodes from which surface almost randomly, triggered by all manner of stimuli, either from the past itself or indeed new events. The capacity for the [my mind - the only one I can truly vouch for, I think] human mind; aided, abetted, and encapsulated after all, by the human brain [mine only] itself; to store completely the stories of [my] life and that of its temporary owner, is truly remarkable. Whether that is the summation of [my] identity in this universe is moot and the jury is still out; but O, the joy of having an intact and expanding internal landscape to continually add to, eh? Bendigedig iawn, methinks...