Remember/​Imagine

Remember a maze, inside of a dark box, a small hole cut in one end, a bean placed at the other end. Remember some time later, the bean sprouts, and the plant finds its way through the maze, growing towards the light.

Remember light.

Remember flowers in a field. Remember them as perceived by a bee’s eye, a human’s eye, a donkey’s eye. A bee collecting pollen, a human picking dandelions, a donkey grazing. Different focus. Different spectrum. Different appearance.

Remember shape and color.

Remember a sheep standing in a pasture. A wolf is observing it from the forest. A sheep’s eyes are on the side of its head, a wolf’s are placed frontally, side by side. The prey scans for danger and escape, the predator zooms in on its target. The eyes are closing.

Remember scope and depth.

Remember a story in a book. Once upon a time, learning to read. Deciphering letter after letter, word after word, sentence after sentence. Mental images. Fantasy and history.

Remember symbol and metaphor.

Remember a page on a website. Facts, links, and comments. Remember checkboxes, logins, and captchas. Remember turning on the browser’s privacy mode. Watching images, videos, and sounds.

Remember searching.

Remember friends’ faces in holiday pictures. Looking at them. Remember the time spent on adding their names. Following them. Collecting them.

Don’t forget.

Remember a sunset. Watching the colors change. Noticing the temperature drop.

Remember it every day.

Imagine a light, from a million years away. A spark moving through space and time. A glimpse caught by a chemical reaction, an electrical impulse, a state change. A flash goes off, an eye blinks, a mirror falls. Imagine a vision, from a billion capturing devices. Streets, stations, and satellites. Behaviors, interactions, and emotions. Combine to review what has happened. Filter, interpret, project what will happen. Store for future reference. Imagine that memory and imagination are the same. Memory is an interpretation of the past. Imagination is an interpretation of the future. Imagine it is seen.

Imagine playing a game of chess. Imagine calculating the probability of every possibility. Imagine chance. Imagine a triumph. Imagine the whispers.