Flickering like candle-flame in the wind
The edge of vision otherwise dark
I don’t see mental images. It’s incredibly difficult to describe what I do see, but certainly not the vivid mental imagery that I’m told others experience.[1]
I’ve also recently figured out I am a broadly visual learner. Which renders my memory next to useless. Since if I learn through imagery, and yet my image recall is short circuited…I can’t very well learn anything can I!
Though as I’ve said before, some things stick. Somehow, moments of intense emotion stick. As for why, I couldn’t say. My relationship with emotions in general is complex, to say the least. I’m still working through that. One step at a time, one puzzle piece of my eight dimensional jigsaw at a time.[2]
My mind is like a sieve, selecting if not the particularly good or bad, but the significant of all kinds.
More to the point of this piece though, just now I experienced a phenomenon I’ll call ‘flickering’.
Just as with anything involving this subject it’s complex to describe. Maybe the best description is….
Ghosted images, like the retina starbursts after firework flash. Flickering like the flame of a candle in hissing wind. Dancing on the peripheral of mental image. Tantalisingly unseen like a body’s curve clad in sheer silk. A Schrödinger's image.
Why I can describe so well that which I cannot picture is another classic dilemma in my personal, crazy puzzle.[2] Regardless, I won’t elaborate on the image itself, but I’ll say it was a strong one. And yes, emotionally charged. Enjoyable, even.[3]
Now of course, it has vanished. Startled by my mental clawing at it, my trying to drag it into full, glorious vision, it has dissolved.
A grain of sand in the wind of time. Lost.[4]
All I can do is…
[wring] every ounce of experience out of every damn moment that I breath.
That’s turning out to to be a pretty sweet way to live.[5]
[1] Self-quoting wasn’t…well..self-indulgent, was it? I feel uncomfortably like it was.
[2] Excuse the metaphor — I certainly don’t mean to imply my mind is complex as in ‘smart’. More complex as in pain in the arse.
[3] Get your mind out of the gutter![4]
[4] Oh, was it just mine that was in the gutter to begin with? Damn…
[4] Dammit. I really was enjoying that.[3]
[5] Course, I’m not very good at it.[6]
[7] Yet