MYSELF OVER TIME

The brain is decaying.

The mind is decaying.

The being stands in reference to its own memory.

Being repeats itself in the present

Being dissolves into the present:

Myself today:

There is a being which is aware of its own being-ness. I am this being. The being that is there. Being-there. Being questioning being, being for which its own being is an issue for it.

My memory is also an issue for me.

Myself years ago:

Physical reality is made of atoms, of matter, of light, of material properties that exist outside of particular selves. The structure of the universe can be understood through discrete laws. Laws that may change, but that we hold as truth in the present.

The universe begins with light, a point infinitely dense, that within a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second expands faster than the speed of light. I know because I was there. Or, at least, some configuration of me was.

Myself years before that:

Why why why why why? If I can’t prove it it doesn’t exist. If I can’t touch it it doesn’t exist. If I can touch it, that doesn’t actually mean it exists. Am I touching something beyond myself or do I just appear to be? Appearance is not reality. Appearance is not reality. I will lie here and I will sleep and I will dream, of the future, and nothing will ever change. I learn nothing.

Myself today:

I think I have learned something. No… For me to think I have to assume my own being. I think therefore I am, but what is “I”? Thinking is happening. That's more right. But where? When? No. Yes. Now, maybe. If you doubt everything you will be stuck in time. The future will never come. (The world I make is a world of words, but it is also real.)

Myself years ago:

We call physics a hard science, because of its concrete appearance. Ball moves. Trajectory, kinematic equation, Math going down down down. But, at every level above Quantum the shape is simplified; the formula is an approximation. A darn good one, certainly, but still a shape overlaid against something shapeless, or with an everchanging shape. To be is to be shooting through darkness.

We still don’t know why matter exists at all. The truth-iest of truth relies on probabilities with unknown outcomes. An ever expanding point of light… filled with stuff I am made of when there should be no stuff at all. But if it was dark I wouldn’t be able to see. I not only am working with probabilistic reality, I have to break probability in order to exist. Matter and Anti-matter are not conserved, but they have to be, and so they are, but they are not.

Myself years before that:

Do you remember me?

Myself today:

I remember your potential, your rough edges, your dreams. You were nothing and you were everything, because I wasn’t yet. I am not sure if I have forgotten you with time. I am not sure at what point my memory of you stops and of me, or another version of you, begins.

Myself years ago:

I remember you and you keep me alive. You complicate me. I want to learn everything there is to know for you, but doing so makes me feel like a machine. Where does the knowledge go? Who gets to enjoy it? I try to collapse the wavefunction but you keep stirring the waters. If we add too many distinct waves together all we will make is static noise. I want to change with time.

Myself years before that:

Have you killed me?

Myself today:

No.

Myself years ago:

No.

Myself years before that:

Am I dead?

Myself today:

I haven’t gotten to that chapter in the book yet. I perceive time linearly and so do you, and so for me you are already gone, but for you I do not exist yet. We all only experience the present.

Myself years ago:

They told me the fundamental equations, with respect to time, work as well forwards as backwards. When I solve for the time something occurs or how long it takes, I pick the solution as being positive, but a negative result always also results. Negative time is as valid as positive time. You are my past as much as I am your past, and we are both each other’s future.

Myself years before that:

I know all this and yet I am still afraid of running out of time.

Myself today:

I know all this and yet I am still afraid of running out of time.

Myself years ago:

I know all this and yet I am still afraid of running out of time.

Myself years before that:

Tell me what I am becoming

Myself today:

I’m not sure, yet.