https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification
About two months ago i saw a meme that used an image i had never seen before. At first glance, the image looked like some kind of clutted bedroom i've seen on Hoarders. But after another look, i quickly realized that nothing in the image was recognizable. Everything about this image asked me to look, to inspect, to search. And yet, everytime i searched, i found my self back where i began. Reading through the comments, i noticed someone wrote that the image was a ''simulation of what having a stroke is like''. So i did a google search for ''stroke'', ''simulation'' ''image'' and it was the first hit, posted on reddit by u/mcsabas under r/interestingasfuck. There it was again, earrings and animal heads started to form before quickly receding from categorization. I read more about occipital lobe strokes. Visual input disintergrates and boundaries between objects merge as the occipital lobe is unable to receive oxygenated blood from arteries that run along the back of your neck. A perception-altering change in pressure. Even after receiving this explanation, i couldnt stop thinking about that image.
The treading image is an aesthetic phenomenon. As the mind reads over any image, every glance is an assumption. That assumption is either a conformation or a rejection. If it is a rejection then it creates a double take. If one still cannot identify what is happening in an area of an image the eye moves to
another area to give context. Howerver in the case of the treading image, wherever the eye moves there is a constant mistaking, visual confusion pinging back and forth between the eye and the work, churning in a drumroll, the eye moving around the work constantly searching for context to keep recognition afloat. There becomes a possibility of appoaching infinity by means of the associations you can make.
Looking at things i have to pack makes me feel like i am looking at a past self.
When looking for something within all these boxes we have packed and moved, and unpacked, and repacked and moved, i feel moẻ conscious of my mind's memory retrieval. To find anything, you have to go through this process of recalling your past steps. It seems the categories you can create to package your items is infinite; there is no Dewey Decimal System because there are unlimited ways in which a person can go about categorizing.
Treading for a month.
A asks for her green blanket, which i placed in one of the boxes just before moving them all around the house for the transit. In my head, i go through each motion in reverse to figure out which box it is in. I remember reading somewhere that the mind doesnt store memories like library books on the self, but rather, different parts of an experience are stored in various regions of the brain. In recalling a memory, you have to reconstruct it, creating associations through neural pathways.
Green, blanket, fingers folding cardboard corners, cat hair, my hair. Scent triggers a sensation which sets off a chain reaction, reconstructing a place i have been before.
