Pasts

Pasts are piles of blocks that can be reassembled as needed — but that architecture could never exist in a gravitational universe. There are kids who are able to pronounce every word, varying pitch to indicate punctuation, and even string together sentences in ways that sound meaningful — but they can’t recall the thesis when quizzed. They dance dry in pouring rain. Focusing on phonetics gets us to the thunder before the lightning; camouflaging pubic pregnancies with a leafy collage of letters. We sprint to lines where names are silenced. On the other side, subjects are given voice — not that the page can hear them. When authors abandon words to the world, some are read exactly as they were written and then forgotten. Understanding is change; our words aren’t stored and understood in letters, but in chlorides. Our ideas aren’t garaged in paragraphs, but in neurons. Comprehension isn’t about mirror memory, but the ability to decipher, store, categorize and encrypt back into language in real time. Cognition can be measured in summaries, but it won’t be caged in by them.