183. Exosomatic Memory.
(morning thinking)
On this day…
MetaGoogle
or Apple
will say.
On this day.
And I'll recall
The detail. The way we,
the people in the photograph
laughed or exhilarated
or cried.
I’ll remember with the alacrity of a 20 plus gigabytes
High Dynamic Range Oled mediated display.
The way we threw
sticks to watch them
race beneath the bridge
on which we stood.
Comments collated underneath
will speak to the
way we dreamt
about a future
in which we could.
In which i’m now stood.
Or sat, typically, phone in hand.
On this day.
Looking back
by looking out
When told to.
Fed selected instances.
Moments we chose to
isolate,
capture.
Sedately scroll through
algorithmically resurfaced freeze frames.
As opposed to the jumbled
Fragments and sparked memory bits
Held in my sensory experience of self.
Somatic.
Connotations and connections
lit by a juice spritz
when a contemporary apple is presently bit.
Mist hits olfactory receptors
launching a more complex program.
The scrape of a granite capstone
against my flank
as the moss moves loose
caught under exerted pressure
from the taught waistband
of bleached Berwick Market stall jeans,
staining my Garfield t-shirt
with greens and browns
dangling velcro high tops
at the end of tingling,
nettle stung legs,
toes knock loose Victorian pointing
inching down to find the bark and solidity
of a narrow cox branch
trained along the wall.
Nervous about wasps
and questionable transgression
of orchard fruit theft.
Climb down, stood on tree roots,
guide the next kid's green welly boot
to firm footing.
Solidarity, fraternity, adventure.
Apple nicking.
Soft focus bokeh nostalgia
convinces me I can feel
summer holiday warmed cotton
touch my skin.
In the way of dreams
I'm now hunkered on a C road
between high hedge rows
in a low squat over blistered bitumen
popping distended black bubbled macadam.
Honey warm tar collects at my finger tips
where hay will stick
when we climb into the rafters of the barn
amongst feathers and bird shit,
further and later down the road.
In the future and the past at the same time.
At home, in an impossibly distant future
mum will issue another row
about grass stains, sticky messes
and ruined clothes
but that's later and long ago.
Rich, complex, interlinked memory.
Its possible that there are,
held in server farms and drives
at the back of desk drawers
and in shoe boxes.
More chrystalised,
ring fenced and fire-walled memory
than in the combined minds
of all living humans.
We've externalised our recollections
into dispersed digital repositories.
Fractured binary collections.
Exosomatic memory.
I think it’s lazy to call this a poem. It has some of the hallmarks but really it’s just a stream of consciousness thumb typed into my phone that I’ve then tapped and cut up with the Return button. I’m too lazy to think about the subject any further and construct a well ordered essay or blog post.
So it is whatever it is. Incomplete.
The phrase “Exosomatic memory” came from Douglas Coupland’s Player One a novel written by Douglas Coupland for the 2010 Massey Lectures.The book's five chapters were delivered as separate one-hour lectures I would love to have heard him read. You can get a copy and have a read for yourself with this link here… It’s a thought provoking and enjoyable read set in the very beginning of a near apocalypse. Familiar ground for all of us. This copies only £3.50 so move quick.
Thanks for reading. I hope you have time in your day to do some mind wandering and remembering.
Love you.
Paul.