ReCycled - Michael Giltner (polar express read aloud .TXT) 📗

heads and we only need the right prodding to get it out. There was a phrase at one time, but I forget, sorry, “misremember”, which implied that once you place a conceived thought into action, it would work in the background of your brain, unbeknownst to you, until it finds the answer. Like telling the computer to search for a file and then you walk away only to return later and find the computer has finally found it. That thought that wakes a person up in the middle of the night with an answer to that question that you cannot remember. The “eureka” factor. You had a problem; you assigned it to your thought processes; eventually the sequences in your brain figured it out and then reported it. If you’re lucky, you remember why and then remember the answer. Eureka, problem solved!

I actually kept a notebook beside the bed to write down the answers I sometimes got during the middle of the night. If I tried to just remember the answers until morning, they were like dreams. Whiff like images that disappeared as fast as ice cream on a hot summer day. The longer I was awake, the less I could recall. Writing them down immediately was the only method I found that allowed me to keep those random answers intact.

So, all this space in our brain continually fills itself with the memories of our lives. One, two, twenty, one hundred lives. Who knows? The one we are presently living, and the ones we have lived before. Sometimes there is a breakdown; leakage, so to speak, between segments, and we get a glimpse of our past. Maybe our brain can only hold so much? Depending on the size of the split in the walls that separate our past lives, sometimes we see a little, sometimes a lot.
We sometimes take a trip to a new place, and somehow it feels familiar. We know we’ve never been there before, but we get this feeling we actually were there before. We know things we shouldn’t know about the place and feel enlightened or confused – ah! Déjà vu!

Some people with this breakthrough memory have actually given descriptions of places and events that really occurred in the past. Description of places to which they have never been to in this lifetime; that is, the present life they are living. Some, have unfortunately, remembered their deaths; the circumstances, the people, the place. Possibly violent events tend to wear the fabric between lives more that other events and those “normal” lives stay intact better. But eventually, it’s possible that our brains fill up with this information and something different happens. I cannot comment regarding that activity since I’m just getting used to the fact that I have just been born, with ALL my memories intact! While I’m sure there should have been a barrier to block off this event, it didn’t happen. Maybe, I took too many vitamins the day I died. Those anti-oxidants were supposed to make me live longer, but I don’t think this is what they meant.

If birth is so meaningful, why don’t we remember it? I talked with my girls about their memories at times and asked them what the earliest thing that they actually remembered. Not something that they think they remembered, possible based on stories told to them by my wife or me or photos that they had seen – their trip to Disney World when they were 2 and 4 - but what they actually really remembered as events they and only they knew about. It turned out, and you can try this yourselves, that they were 4 or 5 before they really, really remembered something unique that was their own. Everything else had some reference point that happened later in their life that created the false, or seemingly-false impression that they had actually remembered it themselves. Well, this for one convinced me that, if I could re-live it, there would be no more vacations with kids before they were 5 or older. Why waste the time or money and why experience the pain of traveling with children when they wouldn’t even remember? The constant “Daddy are we there yet” or “Daddy, when will we be there?” or “Daddy, can we go home now” only hours after you arrive. I’ve known friends who even took their children to Europe; to show them the culture! Except for the pictures they took, the kids don’t remember any of it. They were also too young to know what culture even meant. And, unless their parent remodeled their home when they got back, they would most likely never run into a bidet ever again.

So something very special must happen in that tunnel as you are speeding toward the light. Maybe it creates a memory barrier, or erases it, or does something so that you cannot remember your past. Like a commercial hard disk cleaner for your computer. You turn it on, it generates a magnetic field, and wa- la – everything is erased. Or maybe, I’m a fluke. Maybe you do just die and move on, or not, and I for some reason, moved in a different direction. Driven by a different beat, maybe a sunspot happened right as I entered the tunnel, maybe a miniature black hole hit me, killing me instantly and sucked my brain through a wormhole into this new being. Who knows? I can only relate to what has happened to me. I’m not sure if there is a rule, since no one else, at least as far as I know, has made it this far and lived to report about it. Or maybe they have and are now living their life happily in the funny farm. Once you report a crazy idea, then people begin to think you possible are crazy
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Oh!

Please don’t stop! I never want it to end.

I’m almost constantly bathed in pure ecstasy.

You can really learn to love this baby’s life. I have no track of time. We sleep, we eat, we look around, we poop and we sleep some more. And when we are fed, nirvana!!!

First and I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate this at all, those huge, beautiful breasts. His mother is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, even thought his eyes are not totally focused, she is gorgeous. And those breasts! When she snuggles him up to those tankers, well, all I can compare it to, is first time sex, maybe recreational drugs, good ones, but this is even better. Warm, fat-laden, rich milk fills us with a sense of pure pleasure and well being. We lap it up, and God can he eat. Just sucks her dry every time, first one then the other. Those zeppelins of pleasure seem to have gallons and gallons, yet he still drains them. And the pleasure, the pure unadulterated joy I feel flow from him, through him during this time is immeasurable. The warmth of her body being directly transferred into his.

I know, I’m a dirty old man, but I don’t have anything else to reference it to. If I had partaken in a plethora of drugs, maybe I could provide another analogy, but I didn’t and I can’t. Maybe this is what Dr. Timothy Leary was searching for with LSD; a continuous state of pure ecstasy and pleasure.

I’m essentially incapacitated by the pleasure. And once we are through with eating, time to sleep again. And more pleasure floods us. Freud was so right. The simple pleasures of a baby are magnified so many times that I feel, no, I know I am addicted and I don’t have any idea of how to control it, nor do I really want to, other than to make it continue. I don’t even try to exert any control to minimize the effect it has on me. I’m afraid that if I do lessen it somehow I may never be able to get it back. Every situation pushes me further into the pleasure dome, one from which I never want to leave.

Who knew - well Freud knew - that the simple act of peeing would provide such an orgasmic sense of pleasure? And, don’t even try to describe the hallucinogenic ecstasy of taking a big dump in your diaper. Man! What a rush and this cycle just continues. The baby keeps pumping me with these pleasure cycles. Continually, only when we sleep, do I escape, temporarily, but longing for more. We eat, we sleep, we pee, we eat, we dirty our diaper, we are cleaned up, we eat, we sleep, and on and on and on. I now understand why babies get cranky later in life. All this pleasure, all this mental rush they are exposed to is sometimes suddenly taken away and they, the addicted, have nothing to turn to. The cocaine addict that just realizes they bought a bag of powdered sugar! How do I get it back? Why is it gone? Help me! I need it to survive! How can I live without it? Can anything replace it? I fear the loss already without ever experiencing the absence. But, I know it’s going to happen. My memory is setting me up for withdrawal from the addiction. She’ll transition us to a bottle and formula versus those tankards of pleasure; take us to day care where we’ll sit in our dirties longer than we like. The pleasure we now experience will become the crimes of our future. I want to enjoy every moment, every mouthful and never, ever grow older. Peter Pan where are you when we need you? And, I believe she enjoys it as much as we do. Sure, sleeping through the night will make her happier and we’re getting there, but right now, I wish we could chow down 24 hours a day. Wow, if there really is a heaven, it can’t get much better than this.

Well. It finally happened. I didn’t notice it at first as time seems to have no real meaning in this new state of being. He sleeps, he wakes, he naps, but I’m not actually sure how long it was between cycles. I just noticed it changed. And now, yes, we are moving on to eating versus being fed. Possibly semantics, but now not as much milk – boy, do I miss those puppies. We’re on to “baby food”, but not solids. Kind of forgot all the garbage we fed our kids. How can they stand this crap? First, it has no taste, or what taste it has is terrible. Even the so-called cereals are bad. Wish I could get a bowl of wheaties, rice crispies, coco puffs or something that I recognize. The world has totally turned upside down. Sure, he likes it, it’s new to him, but man, this is what I would only expect to be eating if I were in a nursing home or worse and couldn’t feed myself. Give me a tube and pump it into my gut, but don’t make me eat this stuff.

My life is totally degrading. All the simple pleasures that we once loved are now becoming