My Card Catalog

I am trying a writing experiment. I know I promised a post about my third boulder, and I have not forgotten. It will come next. In the meantime, I want to write down some strong imagery that has come to me repeatedly.

Every morning, when I wake up, I find myself in a space that lays in between the unconsciousness of sleep and the awareness of being fully awake. I am not sure what this place is, but I love it there. I am still relaxed, and I have my best insights lying in this state. I try to prolong it by repeatedly going back to sleep and waking. Later in the day, I remember what I was thinking, but it is far away and out of focus. I get the feeling parts have evaporated. I tried briefly to research this state of mind, but I don’t think I have found the correct definition yet. Freud wrote about the psyche having three components: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. It really isn’t any of those states. Jung comes closer with his definition of the subconscious. “Since there is a limit to what can be held in the conscious focal awareness, an alternative storehouse of one’s knowledge and prior experience is needed.”

OK, whatever. Psychological jargon aside, I am intrigued to try to write from this state. My physical challenges have increased. It can be harrowing to sit up, for now. Also, my fingers have more nerve damage, so typing is difficult, but I found a great solution. I got a voice-to-text app, which allows me to lay back and write directly from my psyche. Don’t be scared of what lays in there; read on for my first attempt!

In my freshman year of college, I got a job working in the library’s reference department. It’s crazy to imagine now, but pre-internet, you needed to use books to find information. To find the books you needed in the library, you used the card catalog. The card catalog was magical. It was the key to knowledge. Arranged in many long drawers were small, worn, dusty cards. The cards were a manila color with typewriting on them. Upon pulling out a long drawer, a smell wafted out, similar to an old attic smell. The location of the book you were looking for was noted using the Dewey Decimal System on each card. Cards were arranged by subject, title, and author. On top of the catalog were small boxes containing recycled scraps of paper and small pencils you used to note the location of your books. When I got my job in the Reference Department, I was so excited, thinking I can find out anything now! The thrilling power of knowledge coursed through me.

I imagine my life experiences as small cards all the same size, lined up one after another. They are attached to me like a tail, drifting out infinitely into the sky. I feel the weight of my cards as I pull them along. The cards are all the same size, but they have different masses. Some are very light and weigh almost nothing. These cards are my experiences of joy and happiness. They are scattered along my line of cards and have a bit of a glow. Conversely, some cards are heavy and grey. These are cards of trauma, pain, and depression.

After I have processed an experience, a new card is added to my card file tail. Sometimes if I have added too many heavy cards, I am unable to move. The weight paralyzes me. I can not remove any cards, they compose my existence. The only way forward is to become psychologically stronger so I can pull that weight. Or to make some of the cards weigh less. I am unsure how to do this, but I am working on it because recent cards have a heavy mass. Maybe joy cards can subtract the weight of heavy cards? My tail of cards needs to float back into the sky, wavering in the wind.