Digging up the Past
Sep. 17th, 2007 05:52 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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animal_quillsWhat my body used to be is not the same as what I am now. What I am now is a composite of my past body and my past environment. And those two things were created out of a more distant past yet. This is the principle of cause and effect, karma, whatever you like to call it. It is woven into the fabric of the universe.
The other day I was looking at photos of myself as a baby, toddler, and young child. I could see a being learning how to be human while at the same time learning how to be animal. Most of the photos were in a natural environment, such as in the forest. And plenty of them involved being covered in mud, or sand, or dirt; dirty fingernails; holes in the ground.
Perhaps it was a simple act of being/becoming canine. But I am and was a human, too, right? What neurosis caused the digging impulse permeate my life? Why the need?
The answer: Digging is time travel.
I've spent a long time digging holes into the soft humus of the past. I can't understand myself without doing so.
I found photos of my mother as a baby, child, teenager, young woman. There was a fundamental disconnect out of simple dislike, but going further I found photos of my grandfather, a man who died a few years ago and who I never met. What can I think but, 'Who is this man and what is he doing as a part of my past?' What happens when you go far enough back in time that the lines become blurred? No photos, no memories, no road map?
As an animal person I have other directions to look than the human ancestry. Canis lepophagus, the Blancan coyote, the proto-coyote, is a creature that is nearly lost to the past. It remains in existence only through the modern coyote, and through the skeletal remnants of its bodies. And newly I recognize that it also lives through me. But how can that be explored with an environment gone, with nearly every little thing about it destroyed? There are the flashbacks, but how am I supposed to trust the images and experience? Should I accept them as hints telling me what the missing pieces are? The trees and smells and temperature and strange animals that are strangely familiar?
Maybe one day when I'm some famous paleontologist I'll know more about the degree to which fact and fiction are intersecting in my mind. But maybe that's the wrong way of seeing it.
I keep digging up all these bones of evidence about who I am, from all different places. I'm putting them together and finding a skeleton that becomes nearer and nearer to being complete. And I know that what I experience is the reanimating force, the flesh and blood and nerve endings and spark of consciousness that bring an old dead thing back to life and create something that has traveled the eternity of the universe from then until now, or perhaps from now until then. And it keeps living.
___
I'm looking for input on how to improve this one...
The other day I was looking at photos of myself as a baby, toddler, and young child. I could see a being learning how to be human while at the same time learning how to be animal. Most of the photos were in a natural environment, such as in the forest. And plenty of them involved being covered in mud, or sand, or dirt; dirty fingernails; holes in the ground.
Perhaps it was a simple act of being/becoming canine. But I am and was a human, too, right? What neurosis caused the digging impulse permeate my life? Why the need?
The answer: Digging is time travel.
I've spent a long time digging holes into the soft humus of the past. I can't understand myself without doing so.
I found photos of my mother as a baby, child, teenager, young woman. There was a fundamental disconnect out of simple dislike, but going further I found photos of my grandfather, a man who died a few years ago and who I never met. What can I think but, 'Who is this man and what is he doing as a part of my past?' What happens when you go far enough back in time that the lines become blurred? No photos, no memories, no road map?
As an animal person I have other directions to look than the human ancestry. Canis lepophagus, the Blancan coyote, the proto-coyote, is a creature that is nearly lost to the past. It remains in existence only through the modern coyote, and through the skeletal remnants of its bodies. And newly I recognize that it also lives through me. But how can that be explored with an environment gone, with nearly every little thing about it destroyed? There are the flashbacks, but how am I supposed to trust the images and experience? Should I accept them as hints telling me what the missing pieces are? The trees and smells and temperature and strange animals that are strangely familiar?
Maybe one day when I'm some famous paleontologist I'll know more about the degree to which fact and fiction are intersecting in my mind. But maybe that's the wrong way of seeing it.
I keep digging up all these bones of evidence about who I am, from all different places. I'm putting them together and finding a skeleton that becomes nearer and nearer to being complete. And I know that what I experience is the reanimating force, the flesh and blood and nerve endings and spark of consciousness that bring an old dead thing back to life and create something that has traveled the eternity of the universe from then until now, or perhaps from now until then. And it keeps living.
___
I'm looking for input on how to improve this one...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 02:19 pm (UTC)And also I'd like to read more about how the proto-coyote differs from your experience with the actual coyote, what it feels like, and how "extinct" differs from "extant" if it does (maybe you could use it for our next prompt if you weren't thinking of this?). Just random ideas, I'm in a bit of a rush atm.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-04 09:07 pm (UTC)