Snow

I walk through the snow and a memory appears. It has that characteristic colouring of a mental image indistinguishable from a dream's memory, apart from the vague agreement of others having a similar mental image. It is a nice memory, the mountains in taiwan, youthful energy and hope and curiosity. I think to myself, surely, if things don't go terribly wrong at some point in this spacetime block, this memory, this experience, is being replayed over and over. It could repeat indefinitely, and it would have its unique quality, and a reality to it, that would make it a valuable use of resources for post-me-or-me-adjacent. But then the thought strikes me, why the heck does this moment exist? Surely its realityfluid is neglegible given the number of repeats of other moments. I perceive — each moment. It is real. A moment ago taiwan timeslices were real. Now this is real. Most of what is claimed to be my life is not real. Yes, this moment is also infinitely recurring, of course it is. That's what makes a moment real. Joy Division playing as I take a path I never took before. All the memories leading up to this, from the preceding years, are like overtones of a cello tone. The walks from school at dawn, using a ferry, thinking about death and listening to grey post-punk music. It is all real inasfar the overtones of a low A are — they become real, through this timeslice that is infinitely repeated. What about the next moment, or the one after? Well, it will simply not exist if you don't choose to continually repeat it. It will simply be stepped over. But there is an acausal mechanism here — by perceiving a moment fully, one makes the future-self choose to repeat this moment forever. Well the causality is backwards, but there's logical correlation, so it works. Maybe this is what Nietzsche realised that one day. By living, one acausally makes this moment worth living forever. One is, through the future, affirming this moment infinitely. It doesn't matter what valence that experience has — if it's real, you have chosen it to be real.