Memory... "Days Of Being Wild"

I remember a time before time, or rather, I remember a time before the concept of time. I was very young but not so young that I could not grasp the progression of days. The Sun rose and the Sun set, I awoke and I slept. I had a simple understanding of this synchronization but very little of much else. I can't remember being able to wrap my head around minutes and hours, much less weeks and months.

I had a question, of what, I can't remember. Maybe it was about my birthday, maybe Christmas. I wondered when this day would come. It was on the horizon and I was consumed with the excitement of anticipation. I couldn't wait and I had to know when I could stop. I asked my older brother and he swung the hammer. My world shattered when I first began to internalize what a calendar was.

I remember very clearly the boxes. Perfect lines, ordered and closed. It was so foreign to me to encapsulate the days of my youth in these boxes. This is what days are? Blank white boxes, all numbered and lined? In a lot of ways it was offensive, repulsive even. It just never made sense. I was taking it in but I couldn't fully grasp it yet... but still I could feel it slipping away. There was this tension, this tear, this pull between the past and the future. In a sense I could feel myself slipping away, in the same sense that illuminations and traumas are like deaths and rebirths.

I was forever changed by the concept of time. Before there was nothing and everything, then it all started closing in. It was as though my mind and my experience were running wild and free and then the calendar came. I don't think it's a simple coincidence that they look like nets and cages because that's what it felt like, like I was being reined in and caged. But I still have the memory of what it felt like before, the bliss of that ignorance. To have lost the memory would have been the greatest crime because it's the one thing blocking the onset of the prime Stockholm syndrome. I still have it and it's still within me. So here's to holding on, and to breathing new life into the spirit of the days of being wild.


DS333, devout.