I have started writing compulsively again. In the past, I have had periods of time when I was consumed by an idea, or more likely, by a whole set of ideas, and I would write obsessively, but it has been quite some time since the last episode.
Over the course of the past month or so, I have been living through extended periods of lucid thought, recalling past experiences in great detail, essentially reliving the times and moments and places and people from various periods of my life. Often, the memories cut across time, linked not by time or place, but by the flow of thematic connections and relations. Also, there is a strong kinship with the concept expressed in the title of (1) Borge’s short story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” if you can imagine.
This stream-of-consciousness can be triggered by almost anything: a picture, a word, a phrase, a bit of music. I have let these memories flow, twist, and turn and only when they have subsided did I sit down to write a few notes, with the notation “DKos” on the top, providing just enough information for me to re-trigger the flow at a later time. I have twenty or thirty of these short notes stacked on my desk, none of which have actually become diaries.
The following diary, a nearly verbatim transcription from last night (Friday), started out as one of those short notes subsequent to an overwhelming series of detailed memories. As usual, I got my 5×8 yellow legal notepad and was about to start writing a note when I realized I couldn’t remember the initiating thought which had launched the thread. Oh well. I restarted the DVD I had been watching before this event triggered…and immediately put it on pause. One flash view of the first image on the screen brought it all back in all its flooding glory.
