How to live when no one remembers who you were?
Kolmn had seen and read of so many that had suffered through amnesia, and in time may have made some partial if not full recovery. He were least prepared when one day everyone had forgotten his name, and then his life had changed forever. The police had been called on him by neighbor and apparently all documented accounting for his whereabouts had vanished on such a day, including his official records with attached photograph. Kolmn had insisted that he had been robbed of anything of any proof, and that his insistences of any memory, any attached notion of him previously to the 25th day of Soan, 215 were absent. He were expelled from a given residence and authorities had given him little time in the process. He hadn’t even the time to place a call to his parent’s before his account were suddenly closed. When he had placed a call to representatives about his account, they strangely queried him though without saying so much. A message would appear on the mobile’s screen ‘Please deposit at a nearest location’ while a still frame of Kolmn image hinted at the ramification of the criminal undertaking implicit by his actions. Another’s mobile, another’s life that Kolmn had trespassed upon. At such a moment in time, for all manner of judgement weren’t given by his having supposedly stolen a device but in his continued usage of the phone and potentially any invasion of another’s life, or how he potentially abused the contents of another life in the process even while the mobile were completely off limits. How absurd it were that he couldn’t communicate while such world had provisioned the most of communications infrastructure.
Kolmn walked several kilometers even though it were impractical to do so. He thought firstly of his parents. He would go in that direction, but he weren’t sure how he would go there. His mind weren’t settled on how far they might be, or how far any other place were in a given destination that were always pre arranged in previous times. In times past, Kolmn scarcely glanced out the window of his transport while glancing at the glowing screen of his mobile. Arrival came after the comedic interplay of amateur shows alongside the changing pressure of air and a steadied high pitch hum reverberating through body and soul. Arrival meant a place different from here to there and each path from there given by some unsteadied thought that Kolmn could be slightly more tense in anticipation. Someone new in meeting maybe, or that he had as usual forgotten something which inevitably had him backtracking. Now, however, Kolmn were walking. How invaluable the path would have been if he had remembered it, beyond navigating screens and sites which were said little to him of where he truly were in a physical context. His eyes strained further as a given path ended. ‘This ends?’ He thought, glaring at what would be the path moving beyond its terminus, beyond an obstructing fence neatly hemming in another division of the city. Kolmn had by the then passed professional walkers. Inevitably their lives like any other were circularly moving from house to some narrowly wooded place, and little time for a solemn cast at any cascade where this would be most likely in thunderstorm. Little use should exist for those moving anywhere that weren’t given in some circular direction, and in such moment Kolmn felt a revelation that his world were missing something of greater use. At least for his circumstance, at least that it were possible that a given destination weren’t to another incidental trespassing that placed Kolmn least where he shouldn’t be while literally a security presence had taken notice of Kolmn.
A gaurd approached Kolmn what ‘he [Kolmn] were up to’. There were no saying, however, all the condition or circumstance that need be stated, that any other authority had provided little advisory to the extent that he, Kolmn, were to exit yet another premise, and likely the same would be true yet again. Kolmn sensed only reciprocally what others may have sensed, that he were out of sorts in some way, neither moving in some circular way from home back to home and given the inclination that a path were always purposefully from work to home, home to home, or inevitably having some consideration for occupancy that Kolmn neither possessed in the clearest way and had shown by any level of body distress. A guard reminded him of anti loitering laws which would prohibit any occupancy of the walking path, though it seems more clearly, he had in reading Kolmn’s mind on the matter of moving where Kolmn should not be moving in life. That is not moving beyond a designated area that were intended for any resident, and at least Kolmn had not suffused in becoming an invisible transience in life that were merely sensed by feeling but never truly witnessed in such an age. And how to escape the city? Yes, how, Kolmn would tell the guard that his pet had gone loose. The guard would rolls his eyes, sarcastically reproaching on matters of appropriate public social etiquette for pet handling. This would lead into yet another series of exchange given by Kolmns tactful omissions, avoidances in statements or anything otherwise leading to self incrimination which hadn’t yet already occurred. Kolmn would be handed a citation for loitering in a restricted premise. How to escape the city? Security managed to give him a lift to the outskirts of another enclave that he had never really heard of in name. Yes, maybe, once on a given transport delay, and when Kolmn had lifted his eyes from his glowing mobile, screaming and commotion from outside. He heard sharp swift footsteps. Someone yelling, ‘Are you okay?’ No response. Though Kolm dared not leave his transport, both choosing to dim the transports windows. Then sirens came wailing. An accident report surfaced on his mobile, yes, accident what he might have suspected. He couldn’t have possibly have been a witness anyways, so he wouldn’t be of use anyways to anyone, nor desired being of use.
Kolmn’s eyes darted about as he scrambled through thick wooded vegetation. Footfall producing at times the sharp cracking of any long since dried woody branch so much in startling Kolmn as though he had just awaken from a bad dream. There were shouts coming from all around, human voices, those same voices were the witness of him having gone into a no man’s land. He managed to scramble through a series of old worn granite outcrops. Kolmn cut his hand on a jagged edge as he had nearly slipped and frantically slapped a rough hewn wall with his hand, leaving his palm wounded and bleeding. Voices all seemed to dance around him which he had heard even as he stooped to the ground clasping his hand upon his ears. How long had he been evading them? He managed to fall down into a ravine, and then were received by a gushing stream of water. Kolmn were placed at the periphery of one enclave while being ushered as a problem into yet another. Although likely as he sensed his time may have been limited happenstance to the notion that a receiving end were simply more equipped in handling Kolmn as a transient in other ways that the previous place were not. At twenty paces from a given his drop off point, Kolmn dove into the woods and thus commenced his escape, as he imagined, which prompted the flurry of yelling and voices which he heard even whilst his lungs painfully hurt and his legs were numb. Exhilaration and fear had penetrated into his mind so much that he could little think but feared in a primal way all the voices surrounding him. Even as he had repeatedly fallen, he quickly arose as though in persistent automation. Kolmn’s body were received in a stream when he had lost consciousness. A torrent of hydaulic force hurled him through a narrowing set of nearly impenetrable rapids, momentarily he had pinned to a wall with the force of water hitting so hard that he were suffocating even while his head were above water. As quickly as he had lost consciousness then, the stream had relinquished its raging grasp of his body and deposited him through a series of falls and onto an embankment. When Kolmn awoke, the voices were nowhere to be heard. Night had come leaving only the hint of quiet empty dark homes all around hidden about another flat strewn unfamiliar woodland enclave.
Inset night chill had Kolmn uncontrollably shivering. A pet house, which Kolmn had climbed into, were situated in another backyard of a house at the edge of a clearing nearest the woodland stream that he had escaped. There were little sleep to be had. His body’s aches and pains were uncontrollable in as much the hunger that he suffered. When were the last time he endured not having a regular meal, or having endured sleeping in the way that he had slept. He heard his girlfriend saying to him, ‘You need a map really. A map do you know what a map is?’ What is a map? A map is more often a digitized reproduction of an locale, he heard himself replying. At one time a map might have been printed on some physical media, but today his mobile were a vital source for getting around, though there were little necessity in reality in ever possessing or owning a map in such times. ‘You are lucky your clothing’s communications are out!’ [she] interrupting Kolmn in mid thought. Certainly they might have found him, or maybe this enclave were one of those rare places of a collective that cared little in knowing every detail of its inhabitants and those passing through? ‘Do you know really how far your parents are?’ She would query Kolmn as Kolmn attempted to close his eyes restfully. How far? Well over a thousand kilometers. And what about you? Kolmn asked. Me? What about you? Kolm asked again. No reply. A damp heat suffused into the small pet house from his now steaming body, and eventually a calming sleep had overwhelmed Kolmn to the extent that he dwelled in a peaceful void.
Morning light lapped at Kolmn’s forehead beckoning from an often passing dark foggy haze. The nearest house, remained still in the quiet. If only no one were home, such a place should seem all the more inviting. Even so the likelihood that such a house should remain untouched in any modern context were nill as were likely much of the yard that he had already trespassed. The house itself couldn’t have been more than a decade old, not given its well kept newly wood shingled look. Even if it were another’s vacation home could it be worth any risk attempting to knock on the door or entering? Kolmn’s dirty and damp body already shown signs of vagrancy. Security likely would be called before Kolmn laid a hand on the front door, and likely this could be the case if hadn’t exited the backyard soon. Kolmn at least felt certain that he may have landed himself in some enclave that were less populated, not likely rural but certainly less populated given the manner of rare space and solitude to be had as seemingly the illusions of a given certain surrounding wouldn’t betray how likely many there were. Kolmn imagined a woman exiting the back of the house naked for a morning stretch on the house’s upper floored decks. Stretching freely in the world that had so few derelicts like himself in view, perversely hidden behind a tree. At least those problems had been handled a long time ago. Long ago, Kolm muttered. Long ago.
Kolmn could sense a trail beneath his feet even while he couldn’t see it directly. Sensing as in the same unobstructed and generally smooth and flattened earth that kept him moving at a better pace, relative to the often broken pace felt otherwise had when bushwacking. Houses at times dotted the landscape all around were it seems the trail were kept by animals alone that might have often been welcomed grazers relative to any human explorer counterpart. Such trail wound from one rolling hill through to ridge after another, descending into small valleys which after a few hours dose of walking only seemed endless. Kolmn took rest on a tree finally before a strange but familiar sound gave way. A whooping whistle which might have been mistaken by some as a bird song. The newer trains hadn’t roared on their tracks like the older ones in previous centuries but seemingly glided on them with much less resistance while producing some high pitched whistling noise often when passing. A train rested idly on tracks below the trail that Kolmn were situated. A station nearby? Scrambling rapidly to train, Kolmn sensed what had suspected. Although he couldn’t see where the station begun, and certainly the length of the train alone were greater to any extent of a passenger’s sort, but at least it were delayed in some way.
Riding Trains to Infinity
Many trains pass. No one cares that you exist here so long as you don’t disturb the world in making something they desire and need, or think they need, go missing. They don’t care that you take what is theirs as long as they don’t miss what they have lost. That is the truth. Nascent spoke these words as in a given repetitive authoritative repose. This train is scarcely watched because there is little lost of it, and that I or you, or enough of us are a rarity, but when there are enough of us, we are likely gone. Otherwise, there would be more of us, wouldn’t there? . These trains move in circles anyways. Always in circles.
Certainly a small package of something disappears, something that they hoped could provide nourishment, something tangible to any circumstance for living.
Kolmn awoke to find Nascent staring at him, the first time either of them would meet. Kolmn soon thereafter found himself in a violent struggle. Even as Kolmn thought he had hidden himself well enough under tightly wrapped tarpaulin wrapped cargo on a flatbed train car. The man managed to find him there, or likely as Kolmn would later learn, there is nothing so hidden when much more is universally known for the condition of finding one’s refuge. Kolmn had been kicked several times. Kolmn managed to trip Nascent before running no further to the edge of a given car. All for real estate, Nascent would insist that any newcomer would expect as a price for squatting. No place to go. Likely he could have jumped the car though he hadn’t leapt from the now speeding car. Kolmn would endure a beating as he clutched his arms to his head. All to submission. Kolmn in another’s world rage, for something of one’s possession.
Kolmn weren’t sure how long he suffered thereafter. A raging fever had taken hold of him. His thoughts scattering into a cold windy rain falling upward. Fragments of memory had Kolmn being moved. More like violently dragged from the car. A fall onto rail gravel embankment to a given abstraction as though in a dream. Everything around him were soaking wet and abruptly cold drawing him into a violent awareness that sharply faded and pulsated to renewal.
Who has done this to you, man?! Nascent violently shook Kolmn awake. Kolmn groaned in place. All were to incoherent. Nascent grabbed and shook Kolm again, until Kolmn could offer only garbled speech. Where have you come from? Nascent would ask.
Kolmn wouldn’t question Nascent. In time Kolmn never replied to Nascent but only listened to his half drowning monologues. Nothing would change in such a world.
You are...
You were once married to Jura. You remember her? Your daughter? Your life? Do you remember?
Kolmn would meet the parents he never knew while abandoning the parents he never really had. What probability should exist that he would stumble into an old circle of people that long since moved away? That he never really knew at all? Where it so simple in passing through a market that someone might recognize him on any given day for a place that he hadn’t remembered at all? Such a world had turned into a maze. Of dark corridors. That he hadn’t frequented the same places so often beyond mere days of nearing residence before moving on elsewhere if not having landed in any number of jails that he could scarcely recall. Having lost teeth, developing poor eyesight, being riddled with scars, chronic back pains and liver issues. Anything likely to make him less useful to society had done so. Then it were amazing to have been recognized at all. To have been someone with some intrinsic meaning and having some past connection beyond the often rude stares or anything. Lost in mind. Hellish sobriety.
Kolmn’s surrogate parents had taken him in, the old parents never recognized him, nor remembered anything of him as he once managed to find out. The old parents had nothing of him, pictures, friends, acquaintances, though they existed in name as real people apparently. All reasoned to the extent that Kolmn could have found them by some other method. A public search. Kolmn must have stalked them finding out as much personal information to be had.
Kolmn felt like a caged animal in a home, a place with walls while he found himself pacing back and forth, if not having missed the noise of the streets, or anonymity. Kolmn met his proposed biological daughter. A grown woman that seemed merely another face that weren’t more than a large absence of a memory, that were filled with the images of a momentary father that Kolmn scarcely recognized. Kolmn stressed the mother out then. She couldn’t handle it and left. Much the same for the blues of every man that Kolmn had spoken too having managed to divulge a given past, if this weren’t abandoned. Were Kolmn so unique to anyone? How could Kolmn feel any obligation to himself as seemed at times implicit in so many words spoken by others around him?
You are the accumulation of all the events in your past. Kolmn read this. Something were amiss on this, however. Not merely given by events, circumstance, but all the desire that should be inextricably bound in this. Momentum and trajectory alike. How did Kolmn wake up and still have some facet of Kolmn remaining even as his old world were collapsing all around him. This Kolmn that still lingered in the shadows. She told him she wouldn’t waste another twenty years of her life with a man like him, and she hadn’t wasted any time in life. He hadn’t apparently wasted any time though in retrospect he were curious. Curious to know the man that supposedly dwelled and obsessed in his past and couldn’t walk forward in life. Curious to know how he had become the vagabond never having held down a stable job. This man were a foreigner, and he were foreign to his present life. Time were apparently fleeting. There were no sense of such a world. Little meaning. Not in the context that he, Kolmn, were being punished any more than anyone else. Even as he another’s rage and punishment of Kolmn were so much by the selfish context to the reducible I, bombs were falling worlds away torturing masses of people. His circumstance might have been in many ways no different?
There is nonetheless doubt even when there is security, as many might decision their actions on the notion of finding security alone. Doubt, that they had missed out on something. Doubt that they chose something stable and left a fire behind. Doubt in time that there would be greater meaning in passing anything beyond their lifetimes, or in time having grown to be disliked any more than they were already disliked, all the while having felt a self confidence in putting away any facet of a life once lived put away into drawer somewhere. He told his daughter to live in the moment. Relationships come and go, people come and go. Much of the world will never knew you existed, know who you were, or care to know you. She didn’t listen to him at all, or receive him at his words at all. He were grateful for it. He at least lived in as much as any rich man of Babylon as uniquely given to the providence of misfortune in like kind. While the world were suffering too elsewhere, this suffering should be as unique as anything else in such a world. At least there were few to live out such an existence such his, and maybe fewer to survive it. Little last in such condition I see. He felt certain at times interpreting something.
