FROM: heron74@...
TO: alt.oneirology.entheogens
SUB: RE[4]: The Persistence of Memory

How many are left? Is it just the four of us?

I've been thinking about Fishboy's comments on the Dali painting, and I think it's a pretty insightful assessment of the picture. Memory isn't nearly as persistent as we'd like to think. It's been seventy-odd years since Dali painted that picture, and we can't look at it and understand it without an art history reference guide. We've already forgotten much of the cultural suggestions that influenced Dali's hand.

And what about the later painting he did? The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory. He's definitely commenting on the failure of societal memory—and he's including himself in that group, as well—to retain anything of real value. It slips away from all us, eventually.

One day, our brains misfire and the deepdark, where it is—I don't know—subsumed, maybe. We forget, certainly, but does . . . God? Is that even the right name? Is the collective unconscious intelligent and aware in any sense? Or is it just a vast reservoir of memories?

Do we spend our lives drawing thoughts out of that vast pool, in some vain effort to arrange them in what? Some secret order that will reveal . . .

What am I scrambling for here? Some explanation of eternity? Some hope that this hasn't all been for nothing?

=On the RF

"'Di-di-dah-dit di-di-dah.' Now there's a signature for you."
—Capt. Francis Spinder