If you’re at all like me you wouldn’t normally think there is anything peculiar about what you think or say. I mean, we seldom if ever think of ourselves as whacky or deranged. Now don’t get excited, I’m not warming to an incendiary revelation concerning my private rumination (not of course that there’d be any ingredient of popular interest). But what I’m getting at is this: lately I’ve remarked that I get these sudden images of places we’ve been, always pleasant images many of which are “in colour” so they’re full fledged artistic impressions.
At first for some inexplicable reason I sought to reject or ignore the images that occasionally took shape in my mind. But earlier this morning while lounging as is my wont upon the patio directly into the sun after completing a 9.56 Km cycle along the Ottawa Valley Trail, I reflected once again upon the subject of images. Perhaps another image had materialized, I can’t recall. In any event I was overcome with a new found absorption in what I had previously characterized as annoying. Perhaps the portrait nature of the images I’m seeing has given me thought about beginning a collection of them.
Before going on I confess it is one my quirks that I am overcome by the precision of a beginning and an end. It’s a devotion I attribute to another of my oddities; namely, the love of binary in general. Things like on/off, up/down, all/nothing. The excess does not contaminate the legitimacy of what transpires between the binary poles. Nor should one assume binary implies conflict. The etymology of the word is something having two parts. • a binary star.
“dual, twofold, double,” mid-15c., from Late Latin binarius “consisting of two,” from bini “twofold, two apiece, two-by-two” (used especially of matched things), from bis “double” (from PIE root *dwo- “two”). Binary code in computer terminology was in use by 1952, though the idea itself is ancient. Binary star in astronomy is from 1802.
Naturally I can’t resist the obvious metaphor that life/death are a shining example of the meaning. It’s always a reminder to me to get on with things before it’s too late. At the same time there lingers the desire to look back. Fortunately for me I’ve never developed a taste for harbouring misfortune. Accordingly there is nothing in my past upon which I look without a smug gleam of satisfaction, always thanksgiving and never remorse. This however is not to suggest the past is of primary interest to me. It is not. In fact in some respects I ignore the past. Until only recently I never kept photographs or old letters. And to this day the stuff I write is for me nothing more than a catharsis; and, once written, then ignored. Besides I consider it axiomatic that the past is essentially over.
Having said that, another of my oddities is a passion for lists. The internet satisfies that necessity for banking and investment certainly. But I’m having difficult seeing how the internet can assist me in my collection of images. Even performing a collection of images in my mind with the hope of remembering them again is unlikely.
At my age I have the privilege of dwelling upon an image at length. No question that the image briefly permits enlargement of thoughts before evaporating out of mind. But it is generally a whimsical experience. In any case it is not to be ignored. Whatever recollections fired by the images and the thoughts that may have percolated – they’re worth the price of admission! And like most great shows I suspect there’ll be many memorable clips!
