Open Thread 2/2/22 Wednesday
Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
Philip Roth
Welcome. Today is known as Groundhog Day. In contemporary culture, this is somehow associated with the fantasy comedy film with Bill Murray getting stuck in a recurring past. Deja Vu all over again.
Deja vu is a real phenomena, sometimes a very powerful mental experience. Science has associated it with an electrical discharge in a portion of the brain. The term itself is a French adjective, meaning already seen.
There are other, similar mental mysteries. Presque vu is one. From French, meaning "almost seen" is the intense feeling of being on the very brink of a powerful epiphany, insight, or revelation, without actually achieving the revelation. The feeling is often therefore associated with a frustrating, tantalizing sense of incompleteness or near-completeness.
And then, there is the scarier state called Jamais vu also from French, meaning "never seen" and is any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer. Sometimes referred to
as the opposite of Deja vu. The memory can be a tricky mechanism at times.
To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
... by Jorge Luis Borges
Have you tricks of the memory to share? Open thread so share whatever you remember ..
Comments
la vie quotidienne
Another French saying meaning everyday life. The flashes of memories almost realized, the experience of having this episode already lived thru, and the erasure of past recollections.
These are little understood forms of mental awareness.
Some science can hypothesize these episodes toward the functioning of synapse, dendrite exchanges, or something very subtle in the biochemistry of the brain.
One theory I like to entertain filters down to the nature of consciousness. It is perhaps like looking into a mirror thru a veil. Occasionally the veil slips away and we are left with raw awareness what is, was and will be. Dreams seem to operate in this realm.
Perhaps this is just another indication of the developing senescence of the mind.
Senescence, indeed.
I can tell that my own mind is slipping away- I often feel that I'm living in some sort of a just-waking state, still lying in the warm sheets, and never fully awaken. It is all too often as if the alarm has just gone off, and no amount of vitamin B will restore full clarity. I'd try caffeine, but my cardiologist would have a cow; and I'd probably just be jittery-cloudy instead of comfortably-cloudy.
I'm reminded of a science fiction short story I read decades ago, about a person who was convinced that things didn't exist when they weren't there to see them- basically solipsism taken to an extreme. After years of therapy they were declared to be cured, and the last scene of the story was them driving out of New York City and into their new lives. Meanwhile, behind them, the cranes were being brought out, and teams of white-jumpsuited Assemblers began to break down the city and put it into storage, until they someday returned.
I wish I could remember the name of the story now, but in keeping with the topic at hand, it has slipped my mind. Nevertheless, whenever I go someplace, I amuse myself by being on the lookout for people in white coveralls and hardhats scuttling away out of the corners of my eyes, or large screw heads covered by curtains to allow for rapid assembly/disassembly of the set du jour. In short, I've got all the French Vus covered, and I'm never bored... I simply call all of the intersections of Deja and the other Vus "continuity problems".
And have a great day, everybody!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
continuity problems
that is a good way of looking at things. What amazes me, is on occasion I will get a fresh memory from out of the blue. Very detailed, as if from yesterday. The weird thing is, I have no idea what triggered it. Hadn't thought of that for 30 + years, and all of the sudden I am reliving some
mundane occurrence lost to oblivion. On the opposite side of the coin, did I just take my supplements this morning, or did I check the mail already? Life is but a dream.
Ahh, and that calls
for another favorite tune, this time from the largely-forgotten German band Propaganda: Poe, set to music.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4E1zMLghhY width:300 height:200]
Edgar Allen Poe, March 31, 1849. Everything old is new again...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Heh, your last sentence sent me looking for
and on the way I found
do some do wop daily
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Happy mid-winter day
Working our way along the wheel of time. Days continue to grow, and warmth edges closer.
Imbolc (the pagan name for today), February 2, is a celebration of the promise of the return of spring.
https://exemplore.com/paganism/Wheel-of-the-Year-The-Eight-Pagan-Holidays
So now, as the Maiden form of the Goddess whispers to us of hope and new beginnings at the festival of Imbolc, it is on a cold February morning that you are invited to step onto the ‘Wheel of the Year.'
— Carole Carlton, author
Have a great day! Chilly and rainy here.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The only thing fertile here is my imagination.
Have a couple feet of snow on the ground to celebrate.
Perhaps the howling of the coyotes at night signifies their pleasure
of the mating game.
Happy Imbolc!
Misc
And in other news,
we have evidence that one of our neighbors got elected to the town council- they actually plowed our street. Wow, we get a benefit from someone else's grift!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good morning QMS.
I just lost a comment, does that count as a vu thing.
I'd like to suggest Tele Vu, "as seen on TV", the cornfoozelation of the tv news, or something even more fictitious with reality, including one's own reality.
There's also Deja Deja Vu, the seeming recurrence of some seemingly recurring thing, dream (or is it) or hallucination (again,is it)
There's also plain old À la recherche du temps perdu. If one hasn't read it, should one, and if one has, should one re-read it? Mo bettah, should one attempt it, or simply be here now, yet again, and again.
In the caverns of the mind ...
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I'm all smiles today
Granddaughter passed her nursing exam and starts her residency on the 14th.
Yay!
Been a long hard effort for her. And a bit spendy for me. O'well, never seen a hearse pullin' a u-haul.
40° here and foggy. Getting the seed starter room ready. Start with some early girl tomatoes and broccoli.
Have seven raised beds 50' long, two of them 4' wide. Will try planting the three sisters together this year, corn, beans, and zuccini.
While watching the Pilgrims special on OPB the other nite, I picked up on Squanto telling the colonists to wait for the corn to come up first, then plant the beans and squash.
How 'bout that, getting advice straight from the original source.
Have a great day everyone.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Those beds sound great!
For our CSA we used to do 100 ft long beds, 4 ft wide, about 20 to 40 beds. The 4 ft wide is an excellent size, to my thinking. Can do all the weeding stuff pretty easily, don't need to step into the bed, but have enough room to grow the larger veggies and the corn. Have fun with the seed room. We are starting ours this week too, in the greenhouse
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
QMS, I was trying to think
of that spectacular memory moment, but I forgot it.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thank you QMS,
for steadily imagining the past in the present, and voyages into the heart.