Regular Spelling
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I don't like to forget things.

Anyone who's a regular around Notebook Forums should know that I'm a frequent poster, and the member with the highest post count. Anyone who reads the large threads in Off-Topic there, where I moderate, should be familiar with a particular post style of mine. I'll often post my thoughts or actions, surrounded by asterisk, in a similar form to stage directions. This 'conda-style posting' is rather well known on there, and in fact there's even a fairly recent thread on there dedicated to the style. From time to time the question has come up as to why I do that.

I remember a lot of things. I can remember things that are said months back, years back, even if they're said in passing. I remember a good number of the dreams I have, which I base story elements on. I remember things done over a great deal of time. But, at times, my memory fails me.

Nothing is more disconcerting to me than forgetting something. Yet, I remember little of my actual life. I remember some of high school, I remember a tiny bit of junior high. I have memories, fragments in my mind, going all the way back to when I was about two years old, yet I can't tell you what I did last month. I remember some of kindergarten, I remember practically nothing of first grade. I remember parts of the rest of my elementary school. I remember nearly nothing of my 7th grade year. I remember some of high school, but not as much as I would like. I don't remember very much of my graduation, and I remember very little of after that until the time I started working for my first tech support job, a good 5 month period, in which I turned 18.

The poem I posted a week ago is the so-far-first in a series of poems about this. I'll post more of it over time. It's a two-fold story, one a first person account of a Bard telling the story of his wanderings, and losing his old stories as he learned new ones to tell. The other a third person account reflecting myself, and fragments of memories coming to mind, forgotten strands of the past that should not have been forgotten. The stories eventually intertwine, the things in one affecting the other.

The first poem I wrote for this collection, which I originally wrote as part of a discussion after a funeral in the backstory I've written for Ties to Ifinity ~ Hehehee! The Story. The story of this poem collection, and the story told along with this first poem, originated from a dream I had one day when I decided I didn't go to work and called in sick while I was working at my first tech support job. The particular building I worked in is part of a strip mall, up the strip from a grocery store. As of now, the only things left in that strip mall is a tanning salon, an empty grocery store (the store moved out into a property down the block), and a small medical center, everything else has been taken by this call center. In this dream, I was explaining to a good friend and coworker of mine what used to be in the space, since I lived only a couple blocks from there.

When I was a kid, the strip mall used to be full. There was a video rental place, a florist, an odds-and-ends store which sold things usually $10 and under, this was before the All-A-Dollar style stores appeared. Across the parking lot used to lie a few different restaurants. I walked through the building in this dream, and pointed out the divisions that made the different stores, and showed him which stores were where. After I woke from that dream, I realized that this was something I had never thought about, and had practically forgotten. The restaurants laid empty for years at this point in time, and that one tanning salon was the only remaining shop in the building's original purpose. By now, as I understand, the owner of the property wants to tear down the complex and rebuild it from scratch, as its now more or less useless to him with one measly call center its only attendant.

I post that way on forums so I can remember. So I can look back at some time in the future, and say "oh yeah, this was happening at this time, this was a concern at this time." Nobody else remembers, because nobody else cares to remember. What has gone by is just as important as what is to come, but most people forget this. And then, at the end of the day, they look back and say "oh, what happened here, it used to be so different?"

I want to remember, I want to remember everything. But my mind is fallible. So I write things down, as the written language is not so fallible.


Date posted: 25 June, 2007
Tags: dream internet memory personal regularspelling ties_to_infinity
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