Dust, Matter and Time

This old brain of mine is connected to a million wires. It’s filled with silicon chips and information. Now, it’s getting late on this bed and I gotta sort out what’s gonna come. What’s gonna come? They tell me of a cloud of matter and dust. My mind is matter and my body is dust.

I remember the days when we came home before sunset and all sat around to watch the evening news.

Now they’re downloading my memories into megabites. I’ve got a whole lot of information stored and not a lot of information processed. But I’m processing this now, I suppose?

I remember tuning the radio to find out what was going on in the county next to us. I wanted to hear whether they were reporting on things the same.

I’m anxious about these wires they’ve got me hooked on. This cerebellum and cerebrum is connected through tubes. In time I’ll be disconnected. Time is different now, it’s all digits in digits. I think I’m losing count. Or I’m maybe forgetting how to tell the time.

I remember when we wound back our clocks, changing biannually the seasons, the days. It was difficult at first to get the kids in the bath while it was light. That all changed in time.

I don’t know when mealtime is. They’ve downloaded my body clock. I’m strapped to a drip. I don’t really know which came first. I dream at night and also during the day, and there I imagine that the sand on the moon is gold dust.

I remember when we used to tell stories before bed. I told the same ones to my kids as my father told me. But the grandkids go to bed later than mum and dad these days. Except when their mum’s on night shift.

The nurse is teaching me to see my memory in other physical things, since it’s been taken away through the wires. I think my brain has the ability to put these thoughts away in boxes. But then again those boxes got awfully dusty.

I remember when we got the first wires from overseas telegrams. We sat around, puzzled and talked about how the information travelled in little pieces in the air.

I’ve got a nervous system about this wiring system but I should be able to feel what’s right. I lose my ability to click my fingers while my grandson shows me how he clicks his mouse. “I’m gonna tell them what’s going on like you Gramp.”

I remember when they brought in the computers and we had to readjust with time. The little ladies typed things for us while we talked about what was actually going on. It was all in our heads, their hands.

I was a newsman but I’m lost on the time. And in the news, timeliness is important. They’re trying to download my stories through the wires like I once did, but the information is still attached to people.

I remember when they gave me a tape recorder. They said I could put people’s stories on it. The stories are probably still there, rolling over.

The clock on the wall still ticks and I close my eyes to dream. I think of the cloud, the matter and the dust: I think the sand on the moon shifts between magnets that centre its orb on the earth. I told my grandkid this moon is analog, which means it is more likely to be sustained.

I remember giving my grandson the digital watch that mam said he wanted. He’s fast but I told him “I don’t know how you gonna ever learn the time.”

He came in yesterday, my grandkid. He’s always got a lot of information. I told him to slow down and tell me something with thought. And so he came in again today. This time he told me he got poem he wanna read. ‘I sing the body electric’.

How could I have forgotten this matter?

He must have known it was time. It was dust, matter and time.