Eclectic Nostalgia Protocol
It's all too often I find that conversations which meander throughout my day never coalesce into coherent thought until the opportunity to share my point has passed. It's only much later when the feeling which was spawned in my Mind is able to find a way to express itself. At such times I find I need to take a picture. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words, not in my World. In my World a thousand well chosen words paint a picture which is worth far more.
It was probably for humorous reasons a friend passed me a photograph which she assured me bore a striking resemblance to my appearance. Something about a throwaway comment I'd made a week before had connected when she'd seen it lying in the street. Several weeks later after the conversation had drifted into the area of photography this same friend fired a throwaway comment in my direction,
Have you still got that photo I gave you?
When I replied that I'd filed it in my Library another friend chipped in with the opinion that photos should be filed in an album where they can be taken out and looked at. My Truthsense instantly rejected this opinion leaving my Mind floating in no-man's-land as I tried to workout why. Twenty-four hour later as I'm staring out of the window enjoying the effects of my favourite medication the problem sprang back to life. Quite simply I do not like photo albums; open a photograph album and you'll see dead memories, memories of a time before you were who you are now, arranged into an inescapable thread of introspection. There's a haunting sadness about such albums as if they are designed to suck the life out of the very moment they seek to capture. My Library is different. Indeed the entire point of my Library is somewhat different to that of other libraries you may experience.
To the mythical outside observer there is no apparent order and would appear somewhat chaotic. There is no media demarkation for a start, everything is treated as a Book; CDs, DVDs, and standard dead-tree tomes intermingle freely. No Book can be said to placed logically, there's no alphabetical ordering by author, no attempt to group according to contents. Books are simply placed where they feel right. As time passes trends develop; the top and bottom shelves appear to have become a designated neutral-zone, with the other shelves each representing separate continua within this complex multi-faceted Mind of mine. To some this sounds like crazy-talk from a crazy person, yet as I look now I can see Aliens, a Battlestar, and perhaps a Starfighter asking for permission to move out of the neutral zone; the fact that this evokes three intense and conflicting emotions proves to my satisfaction that my Library has the ability to warp my Mind. One day I'll be able to explain what's going on, but for now I'll find a Zen state and let the Books suggest their new locations and this emotional turmoil will subside.
The Library is also a place I store memories; fragments of paper with a few well chosen words scribbled on them, the odd ticket stub from a memorable visit to the cinema, pictures drawn by my children, and a substantial amount of photographs. All slipped between random pages of whatever Book seemed most apt at the time; unlike a photo album or scrapbook which reside largely unseen on a bookshelf these are living memories. I make little effort to remember where I place any of these memory fragments very long, and I've yet to purposely go looking for a specific item. But from time to time I'll pick a Book to keep me company for a while, I'll take it out, and perhaps I'll find one of my random bookmarks and I'll stop and think. I like it when serendipity pushes something my way which instantly reminds me of an individual. With an image of the relevant person in mind I'll read a few fragments from the marked pages. All completely random, yet for a moment I'll feel the living finger of a friend touch my Mind and for that moment we'll both share that place where we are one.