During my life, there have been certain insignificant things that I felt that I ought to remember, although the reason why has never been clear. The memory became useful when the image of the future that the memory required actually materialized. Only when the memory became a true memory, something in the past, no longer something that I knew would happen, was I permitted to forget it.
I did mostly forget these moments and as I've gotten older, fewer new ones have happened.
I do remember one incident though that happened about fifteen years ago. I call it "remembering Maryann's voice." Maryann worked for me for a period of 2-3 years, I couldn't say exactly how long or when, but she was never more or less than a good person to me, a good worker, a good mind, an attractive face, with whom I formed no special emotional attachment, but for whom I felt respect and by whom I felt respected. She left me amicably and responsibly.
Here's the strange thing, when she left, I felt sure that I would need to remember her voice, that its sound had impressed itself on me in a unique way. There were probably 40-50 other employees who worked during that time, all of whom stood out in many ways, their voices, their personalities, their faces, but somehow I knew that I would need Maryann's voice for a specific phone call that I would get from her someday. I didn't know what for, only that it would happen.
As it turned out, after she'd been gone ten years, completely gone, no contact whatsoever, as so many people leave the first jobs of their lives, she called on the phone and I knew her voice instantly because it was the exact moment I had foreseen. I was not experiencing deja vu, in fact it was the exact opposite. The moment was significant not in what had happened, but in that it had happened at all. I was doing exactly what I had foreseen. The content of the phone call was incidental. I had been waiting for it and it had happened. There have been a handful of very similar incidents in my life.
Here's the strange thing, when she left, I felt sure that I would need to remember her voice, that its sound had impressed itself on me in a unique way. There were probably 40-50 other employees who worked during that time, all of whom stood out in many ways, their voices, their personalities, their faces, but somehow I knew that I would need Maryann's voice for a specific phone call that I would get from her someday. I didn't know what for, only that it would happen.
As it turned out, after she'd been gone ten years, completely gone, no contact whatsoever, as so many people leave the first jobs of their lives, she called on the phone and I knew her voice instantly because it was the exact moment I had foreseen. I was not experiencing deja vu, in fact it was the exact opposite. The moment was significant not in what had happened, but in that it had happened at all. I was doing exactly what I had foreseen. The content of the phone call was incidental. I had been waiting for it and it had happened. There have been a handful of very similar incidents in my life.
I was awestruck by its occurrence because it fulfilled a prediction that I had unwillingly made about my own future. A knowledge that simply came to me, unbidden. It was the event that I had already seen happen. A prediction that all along felt more like a certainty than a prediction. Meaningless as it was, it was important in that it actually happened and gave me reason to believe that the future and the past happen simultaneously, or at least that knowledge of the future is not out of the question.
After I heard Maryann's voice I had another "revelation", namely that I would never need to know her voice again. I won't be able to prove that until I die, furthermore it is hardly startling, but still, it is what I saw.
I have also seen this. I have seen that the earth will go dormant, bereft of humanity and then it will seed again. Meaningful life, earth life, evolving life, sentient life will rise again. The earth will bear fruit; it is in its essential nature.
