Oh what shall I choose among the transitive topics floating about these, the passing days of quotable qualia... which best represents my state of mind right now? You can probably guess I chose psychosis.

Have you ever had deja vu? ever tell a story to friends or family only to hear, "dude, that wasn't how it happened," in response? Cognitive lapses or errors in memory layering are not uncommon in healthy brains. Have you ever feared, or noticed, something more severe than simple forgetfulness? Like, say, if the memories you have with someone had been perceived twice but kept only the latest modal residue.

Imagine that, once, these memories were perceived in the present tense. You know you can trust the present tense--you can look around you at any calm enough moment and, for a period of some ten seconds, you can sample of every sense; you may breathe in scent, you may observe the detail of every thing natural and temporarily naturalized--you can taste what you choose no matter how disgusting or poisonous (though that would make recollection a little difficult.) Most importantly, you can remember how you feel at that moment, even if you can't put a name to it. Ever smelled something like a shirt your mother hasn't worn in years and remember smelling that same shirt with that same laundry detergent and motherly scent and then feeling, suddenly, maybe only momentarily, the same security and humbled love you felt when last you smelled that shirt?

But, let's move back an example. Imagine that, for the second time of perceiving this person's memory, it had been rewritten. Unconsciously, some time throughout the years, you had taken a moment to recall a memory--the memory of a distant lover, to stick with the first example because I don't want to taint the memory of my mommy's sweatshirt! Suppose you were angry one day, and something reminded you of something your old lover used to do; or worse, imagine you were frustrated at a failed relationship and recalled this ex to think how she would have handled this better or this would be better if she were here and bam. Instant deification. Well, I suppose you'd have to be a mindless romantic, reserving that section of your mind where some people place their gods or their worldly ambitions for finding love, but perhaps those people are not so different? do they not get fixated with fanatacism or, in the low of this bipolar relationship, the extreme lethargy of being failed?

The point is, what was once a standard relationship between you and a memory of this person has taken from everything you wanted it to be, and suddenly life you recall life as once being different. You used to be witty, or at least your wit came so much easier. You could juggle your endeavours with one hand because that person was part of your life; you could ___insert miracle here___, because that person was part of your life. But, if you were popping out miracles like sangria jello shooters from your belly button, wouldn't that person have stayed with you? Ah, reality. Ah, reason.

Here's the pointed point: can you trust your own mind? What if you couldn't take every memory for granted and couldn't rely on your own intuitions or your own judgements because the mind you harbour has, at any time, changed the modal imbuement of your past? What if it you lie in bed one morning and think about the girl at Starbucks for whom you wrote a poem: how she could lie beside you right there and you would both trade your flirts before kissing--the different scenarios in which you could flirt before that kiss. You imagine going out with her, and imagine what you would say outside the restaurant afterwards to steal more time with her, getting closer to intimacy. Your eyes are closed the entire time, and you shake out of the trance as though waking. It feels like memory, not imagination.

That represents what I feel right now, and what I fear. My nerves are pricked to the point of oversensitivity and are put on a crawl across the desert of fiery anxiety. The project I've been working on for the past three years, although it still awaits the approval of one of my editors and will still receive my OCD tinkering to the moment until I receive response, is finished. It has gone through about six solid revisions and, beyond that, an uncountable amount of touch ups and singular chapter rewrites. And, even though it would be nowhere near what it is right now without the help of friends--very good, loved friends to whom I owe more than just their best approaches of professionalism--I at uneased. I have doubts, and those doubts have turned to my friends. What if they are talking from their critical mouth but have mixed suit with their friendly tongue?

When it was in its earliest developments, I had friends critiquing who I knew would hold back. There was two reasons: one, they wouldn't take it serious because of other obligations; and two, they probably would have thought the encouragement to be a better motivation. I was ok with this, and as the book progressed, I tried to find the middle ground, eventually coming on my last two editors who are very serious in their enjoyment of literature and sympathize the importance of this project to me. They have been with me through at least the two latest drafts, voicing the opinions which guided my hand in the redraft, and they have reached a point where their opinions on what could be changed are only that: opinions. But doubt... no one ever escapes doubt, they only ignore it. If you can think of a verb, that verb has doubt accompanying. I'm scared of what will happen if I've taken any of my friends in a way other than intended, or if I've wronged them into the wrong mood of interpreting, tainting them like an altered memory.

I'm not all that afraid of rejection, I just fear sending out something to respectable agents that has mistakes that make me look like an uneducated or insipid writer, losing their respect and, perhaps, forcing such a realization upon myself.



The answer is that of course you can trust your own mind. Above being mandatory, it's pretty much the only mind you can trust because, regardless of what reality is happening outside of your perception, you are your mind. Dualism, empiricism: call it what you will; whether your mind is the conduit between your body and your soul or if it's all you have, its deductions and inductions are your sensory records, cognitive records, and the only way a human is anything more, at this moment and any moment, than paint on a wall.

Anyway, these are things I think about. I'll get a distant look in my eyes and just sort of stare rudely at a grain in the wood, finding there a small fear of being called crazy if I voiced it.