Oubliette

Sometimes I think, that if it were really true that certain fish only remember the last 30 seconds, that it might be nice to live that life.

True, it might be that a human life would be quite meaningless. After all, what is the point in striving for anything, if it's forgotten in an instant? Yet on the other hand, it would spare one from the pain of the past. You would truly live for the moment, ever looking forward.

It seems now, in this technological age that everything is recorded somehow, somewhere. Our thoughts, our actions, digital snapshots of our past, sitting somewhere forever. I used to welcome the great evolution of photo taking. Digital cameras, amazing, now I can store those pictures on my computer to pull out whenever I want to. Yet as time goes on some of those memories become painful, reminders of a different time of my life and all the things that have come after. This picture I take today, will it one day become a painful memory?

That place on my computer where my photos live, where they have lived for a long time, is somewhere I don't go. The photos are stored by date, rather than by label. Dates don't have such firm links in the mind.

It makes me sad to think of these things. And yet I can't seem to help myself.