forget\ting ness
adding page while reading Sarah Manguso’s ongoingness
66
i believed i was trying to remind myself of how it had felt to be wordless, completely of the physical world – that even before my body was an instrument for language it had been an instrument for memory..t
not yet scrambled ness language as control/enclosure .. et al
see p 80 and forget\ting ness
79
i wrote about an illness once i was 7 yrs into a remission that lasted 4 more.. i didn’t know it yet, but the illness, which still isn’t over, wasn’t the real problem. thinking about it was the problem, and i don’t think about it anymore. not in the obsessive, all consuming way i used to..
i used to harbor a continuous worry that i’d forget what had happened, that i’d fail to notice what was happening. i worried that something terrible would happen because i’d forgotten what had already happened.. perhaps all anxiety might derive from a fixation on moments – an inability to accept life as ongoing.. t
80
once i spent 2 yrs hobbled by an impaired memory, i worried less about everything i was forgetting..
so maybe back to p 66 – memory is natural.. worrying about what you forget .. not natural..
i believed i was trying to remind myself of how it had felt to be wordless, completely of the physical world – that even before my body was an instrument for language it had been an instrument for memory
perhaps not memory like we think of it now (perhaps less about worrying what we forget and more about living so much you grok/remember what’s important).. more like what james bach talked about in regard to making lists.. James‘s advice – that if it’s important enough – you’ll remember it. and we think we won’t – but that’s because we’re so clogged up with lists and dead ness – that currently in our toxicated state – maybe we do need lists/diaries.. we need a jumpstart back to us
ie: hlb via 2 convers that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
84
before the baby was born, the diary allowed me to continue existing. it literally constituted me. if i didn’t write it, i wasn’t anything, but then the baby became a little boy who needed me more than i needed to write the diary. he needed me more than i needed to write about him
love
85
before i was a mother, i thought i was asking, how then can i survive forgetting so much.. then i came to understand that the forgotten moments are the price of continued participation in life, a force indifferent to time
86
now i consider the diary a compilation of moments i’ll forget.. the experience is no longer experience. it is writing, i am still writing..
and i’m forgetting everything.
my goal now is to forget it all so that i’m clean for death. just the vaguest memory of love, of participation in the great unity
87
when i remember how this document began, i remember it as something i used to worry about
__________
_________
be you. 