Nameless and Irrational

There is a namelessness to certain moments in life, a state of existence that defies all attempts to explain it rationally. The stuff of emotions, no matter how one might stab valiantly at attacking it with the analytical brain, is irrational, easily misunderstood and rarely subject to cool intellectual analysis. Reduce it to chemical compositions and social engineering if you must, reduce all human behavior to a representable algorithm, and I will still maintain the mystery of the nameless moment. For me, it is a matter of faith.

Such moments often blindside me with deja-vu immediacy, something reminding me of something else, like an olfactory trigger, convincing me that I've dreamed this moment before, or will dream it, or am dreaming it right now. A passing sign on the road reminds me of a conversation I had aeons ago; a strain of music on the radio flings me back to a passage that I read in a book whose name I've forgotten. Every time I think I've gotten close to figuring out the workings of my own brain, dissecting every thought until only reason and structure remains, the nameless and irrational comes back out at me, and reminds me forcibly of the mystery.

As I sit here, it's 2:00 am, the antihistamines are kicking in, and I have a strong feeling that if I were smart, I would be in bed right now. I would be, if I were rational, instead of looking at this picture, thinking of something else, long ago and far away. I am, after all, beyond such things; I am a rational being, not subject to unwarranted periods of introspection at the hands of a run-of-the-mill glamour photograph.

Yet, there is an essence to the photograph which, as Tolkien once wrote, "reminds me of something I can't recall". It evokes a time and place that I know I've never been to. It's ridiculous, I know, on a rational level, to be reminded of something I've never experienced, to think of some stuccoed, white-walled Viennese apartment, curtains blowing inward across an abandoned chair; a scene from Harold Budd's "The Kiss", a low-slung horizon and a distant shore. All this from some photograph. It's nameless and irrational, and even as I look over these words, they are the merest shadow of the story I want to tell, the fragment of the picture I want to reveal. Perhaps there's no story there at all, not even a state of mind, but just a suspended moment, an instant of time that never was. Perhaps that's the appeal.

I have often thought that Heaven might be a place where I could tell, in perfect detail, all the stories I've never been able to tell, to bring to life all the moments I hold dear to my heart, but have never experienced or witnessed, with eternity for a brush and infinity for a canvas. If such a place exists, then Heaven, to my mind, will truly live up to its name.