The Constitution of Memory

Inside the deep crust of the Earth, passageways link and dirt and mud and grime connect and intersperse. Layers of the planet consume each other and mix together; rock and bone and soil, in intricate designs and particular position. This center of the Earth, these inside parts, are not so unlike a human. Far more alike than unlike, for that matter.


We cannot see it. Something like this is too far beyond the scope of comprehension we possess. Yet it exists anyway, without regard to our knowledge or cares. The veins of the Earth stretch from continents, under seas, deeper than human contact and also close to the surface. Ventricles and valves opening and closing; to us, phenomena, but in reality a working system of life. Waves crashing, the ground splitting, sounds and sights, the colors of the sky, the shape of the wind, all integral to it's growth, all factors that change it, mold it, shape it inside it's shell. And this happening, unbeknownst to us, independent of us, in spite of us, is reaching a point that all things reach. A season of bloom is peeking it's head out, not unaware, but with a sentience unknown to new creatures. As if a child came from the womb with the prescience of it's future self. A scary thought, furtive somehow, but innocent enough.


All of our scientific intelligence combined would not be able to assess these things if they knew about it, and they do not. And so our Earth grows from the inside out, hibernating, incubating, waiting for culmination. Ignorance, if it can be called that in this instance, has never been more blissful. The fear that comes with certain revelations would render minds asunder.


Imagine being a sub-atomic particle. Not a true one, but a live one, alive with the spirit of humanity. Love and culture and hate permeating it's being without much control. This little particle, now with the features of thought and life and self-sustenance, travels it's whole life knowing for certain that some things just are. The world you live in becomes set in stone. The people around you have proved it so, people much smarter than you, and with verifiable fact and precision. Everything that you, as a people of particles, have learned so far has led you to believe that things are a certain way and that was that. There is no changing it, and there is no way it could be anything else. Now let us stretch that imagination out some more. One day you wake up and you have grown. From the sub-atomic to the more-than-microscopic. Now you are a little ant-sized human. Suddenly nothing is right. Suddenly everything that you knew the day before is wrong. Suddenly you are supplanted into a whole new world, a world that was there all along. A world that existed within you, and without you. A world in the philosophical sense of the word, as the same entities have been there all along, you simply could not perceive them. And if you were able to, you may not have believed what you were encountering.


Now you live in this new world. A tiny little creature. There are bigger creatures, and smaller, wider and farther plains, but nothing in this life is like life in the past realm. There are new tangibilities, new creations, new truths. The style of old is gone and soon enough, you cannot remember it. You can once again only see what is placed in front of you. So you take that all in, and all of your fellows tell you things you believe to be true. They are brilliant and focused and they have studied the observable bits to the end of observation. There is a confidence that this is how life is, was, and always will be. You revel in that confidence, you take inspiration from it, and you relax with it. The comfort you are afforded by the brilliance of others seeps into your mind each day until you are stricken with it. But once more, time makes fools of us all. You awaken on another new day, and things have changed. Changed back to normality. No longer sub-atomic, no longer insectoid, no longer foreign. The human world. The world we all know and live in. You are an average, everyday human. You eat, you drink, you sleep, you crave and you fight, you cry without warning and with ease, you laugh out of control and without holding back, you fear sensibly and you anger maniacally, emotions teach and control you and you learn to control them back, lives mingle and grasp onto the tendrils of one another in passing glances and graces and you trade a little bit of your soul with every person who meets your gaze. Music dances around in your head, when you want it to, and when you don't. Thoughts of the woman you love swim through your brain with olympic endurance. Your best friend holds you close when you need it. Your fingers and toes stretch out far and come back together. Your arms and legs lose control and flap like fabric on a crashing blimp. You are ripped from your mold and rebuilt robotically over and over again.


All of these things are home to you, common and uncommon, right and wrong, for better or worse. You have a particular wisdom and you are SO SURE it is right you are SO SURE there cannot be anything else. Everything up to this point has led you to believe that things are as they are and not as they could be. You count back from ten and when you reach one and you take that deep breathe and reopen your eyes everything is as it was. Everything is normal. Everything is right and there is nothing else.


But there is something else.




This body you have been cultivating for years and years has not been your own, not entirely. Not in the sense you think. You are familiar with it, with it's progresses and insides. You have considerable knowledge of it's workings: inner, outer, mental, physical. But you have been living on borrowed time. The vessel is yours to control but the purpose had already been chosen. This doesn't matter to you, or anyone. Nor should it. When the Earth began to change, it wouldn't have helped you to know this, like it didn't help to know anything else. Things that you thought were certain. The knowledge you thought was unflappable. As meaningless as life itself.


The Earth changed in a big way. At first, it was all explained. The trees pulsating were explained. Streams and rivers thinning and thickening were explained. Mountains rolling over and volcanoes receding were explained. Oceans boiling and congregating were explained. They were simply all explained wrong. They were explained with what you know, not what you don't. Then the thoroughly unexplainable took place. Continents would heave up and drop down so swiftly that the entire population had to be relocated. Thousands perished when this began. No scientific answers could be offered. The Earth itself began to unfold and stretch. Everything that had been thought about it had been wrong. Observers from space sent messages to leaders on Earth that the planet had taken new form. A vaguely human shape, childlike and familiar. They had even witnessed the planet blink. This sent everyone into a tumultuous frenzy.


That tumult subsided nearly instantly. For as abruptly as the cataclysms began, they faded and twisted off. The actions did not stop, though. The face of the world grew, the topography changed, but there were no more humans to react to it. The Earth still heaved with breath, and it still lolled in it's orbit, a testament to sustainability. Now the only ones left were those select few not on the planet. The ones who could see what was happening. The ones who were above sub-atomic sight. They cried and hugged, knowing their fates, but not accepting. So, eventually, each of them stood there, stoic, looking out the window, hoping for something. And then something happened.


The planet we once knew, our old home, our particular way of life, was now no longer a planet, but a chick, not hatched, but made from an egg. A living, breathing phenomenon, nothing we could have known about for it was beyond us. The astronauts could only stare in astonishment. What happened after this was as fast and sudden to them as waking up, and quite the same mentally. It took a few days in human time, but that had no meaning anymore. The earthen child splayed and sprawled and hung in the ether, moving and twisting and trying to form, but something was wrong. By itself, you never would have been able to tell. Our Earth is recognizable, with it's green and blue and white. Oceans and clouds and trees, making a particular marble from a far-away view. So do other planets. They have their spots and colors and rings and hazes. They, too, could be identified when they miraculously showed up. Now the astronauts were surrounded in their space station. They could see clearly in front of them, a planet that used to be Jupiter, monstrous in size, dwarfing our home, for more reason than one, floating in the form of a man. Mars, red and harsh, staring down at our limp and laying planet. Mercury and Venus sat in their view ahead, and Pluto and Neptune behind. Eventually they all stood, surrounding the Earth, swimming in a deep, dark black.


Then they each reached out a hand towards the Earth, never touching, but close. Those hands turned into fists. Something, once again, understood not to us, but to something higher, larger, warmer. Then they all grouped together and swam off into the distance. They were largely in the sight of the astronauts for a while, then smaller, then smaller, then smaller still. Until they were but little pulsing pinpricks in the ever-lightless chasm of space. The astronauts looked down as the Earth descended, if it could be called that. Not as fully formed as the others, it was left out of it's system. Something had happened here that was beyond their comprehension. Doom struck, that they knew, but not why, or how, or what was next, or what was.


What was once a solar system was now an empty black canvas. Metal and Rock and Time remained, as the graveyard of the planets stood, unknown, unmarked, uncertain.