the silver sea

taken in full colour

The Way of all Flesh

a sight i'd imagine very few people will recognise. (though you can probably work it out)

England

England is sleeping.
The rows of tiny towns,
Swollen expanses of London,
Empty patchworks of fields
Cannot yet see the sun
But slumber in a dark blue repose.

Only we, aliens, privileged visitors
Descending from foreign skies
Can see it gilding the clouds
First pink, then orange, gold;
First the high icy waves
Then the great tumbled heaps
The wisps of baseless colour
The highest church spires;
The great land bellow.

England is sleeping.
She is waking, slowly;
The sun is gilding her skin bronze
Her hair white-gold;
It is touching her eyelids with the first rays of day.
And though she does not see
A plane nine-thousand feet above her
My beautiful England is waiting for me
And I return at last.

for someone.
written on a plane about to land.

H ton

Japan 2004

Swimming in a Stormy Ocean

Walking home with the rain on my back
Pattering the puddles that I wade through
I think of the singular pleasure of the stormy sea.

A black mass of storm swims in from the south:
The sky is leaden and foreboding.
Dive into the shallow sea.
There are no waves; only mountains of froth
Colliding and separating and whirling
Diving horizontally with no regard of what a wave should be
And you are jumping, twisting to keep your head above
But laughing with mania at the great sea-gods
Whose winds rake grooves in the water.

And the energy you feel, even before the rain begins
Before it comes spitting harshly down on your shoulders
But when it does you feel you can leap over the waves
The highest foam flecked towers
Raked with the wind and pummelled by the rain, like you.

And standing on shore at the end
To look on the seething animal you were part of;
White glimpses of mountaintops receding to the horizon
A lonely bird struggles so elegantly with the sky
The wind stings your naked chest and raindrops fly in your eyes
But you know, as Calvin said, what it is to feel alive,
Gloriously alive, however temporarily.

true story.
North Carolina, Afternoon 11th August 2006

don't go in there

'I was attempting to write a poem for you'

I was attempting to write a poem for you
So I read all my other love poets
And it occurred to me that love poetry
Is just emotional blackmail
Filled with masturbatory guilt
And self-indulgent melancholy
And so I did not write you a poem
Instead I wrote this:
An excuse.

North Carolina August 2006

i'm not dead,

i'm just quite happy really. And i find poetry much harder to write when you're happy. I havn't posted pictures either because i'm trying to keep it a mix of poetry and pictures. And I'm running out of pictures anyway.

Deppression

If I Were A Bell

If I were a bell I'd ring
If I were a bird I'd sing
If I were a candle I'd burn
If I were a table I'd turn
When I am a plant I'll grow
When I am a train I'll go
When I am a record I'll play
When I am a speaker I'll say:
Because I'm a pen I'll write
Because I'm a lantern I'll light
Because I'm a bird I'll sing
And If I were a bell I'd ring

i posted this a while ago, but it is never more appropriate than now

glimpse

"I wrote this poem for you"

I wrote this poem for you
It is not so clever as a witty joke
Not so useful as a box of chocolates
Not so elegant as a blade of grass
Nevertheless, it is all I have to offer
Take it, keep it, play with it
Show it to your friends

what do you wish for

Collage

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
That is the question.
And how shall I presume?
Well,
We shall find out.

No coward soul am I;
But would it have been worth it, after all,
When the present has latched its postern against the past
To find some way incomparably light and deft
To say,
This is the body of Christ.
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright
But O O O how sweet that Shakespearean rag
I have been one acquainted with the night
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance
But I being poor, have only my dreams
Which is most feeble.

I have outwalked the furthest city light
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
How the mighty are fallen in the midst of battle

War is Peace
Which waves in every raven tress
But in the lamplight, downed with soft brown hair!
Freedom is Slavery
But I was young and foolish,
That little tent of blue, which prisoners call the sky
and now am full of tears.
Ignorance is strength

Gathering wood in vacant lots
Signifying nothing.

While reading The Waste Land, it occured to me that you could make a whole poem out of bits of other poems. This i did.

millions of years

make yourself at home

not black and white, in case you were wondering

Suffice to say -

Suffice to say –
The meeting was fruitful
All important matters were discussed
Evidence was considered
Conclusions were drawn from said evidence
Participants were found to be in agreement.

Suffice to say –
If I loved you once I love you no longer
I cannot afford to waste more time
It is a long time since we were happy
Are you still happy?

Suffice to say –
Our world is ruled by men we will never meet
Even they are the tools of great forces
Forces no man can hope to contend with.

Suffice to say –
Even as I write this line, I hesitate
And yet you know where it must lead.

Suffice to say –
You exist and nothing more.

Cascades

life is short

Australian Cantos

I

Each light I see represents several lives
One to turn it on, one to install it, make it, sell it, conceive it…

The car rolling past disturbs the night
What justification do you have to interrupt it’s repose?

Walker below me, what is your story? Why do you now run?
Do you like poetry?

Even the waves beat solemnly in my hearing.
Where is the nearest soul that swims in cold waves?

The house to my right has many windows not lighted.
What manner of man sleeps in those rooms tonight?

The tiny moving dot above me is filled with people
Each one of them is far from home, but none as far as I.

II

At last the ferry rolls in, so strange in the blackness
Humming mechanically it cuts the waters most unnaturally
It too is full of expectant souls
All of which have come here to fulfil some purpose
And I will never know what that purpose is.
Is there one soul there as lonely as mine?
Does no one look out the window and think:
In all those lights, of which I am but one, so immeasurably insignificant,
Is there one soul as lonely as mine?
And gazing into the stars, so inconceivably far away,
Does one creature look back at me, and sigh, and stop writing

III

The sky is clouded to-night.
I have been sitting here since the last ferry left until the new one arrived
And watched the lights before, and the darkness too.
But I have failed in my simple ambition.
I have been unable to feel my own insignificance.

An uncommon ambition, I concede.
Intellectually it is so obvious as to be blinding.
That I should be so caught up in myself,
So assured of my own significance
Scares me deeply.

The stars have become visible
But as I am no closer to grasping them
I am no closer to grasping
How far away they are.

IV

The ferry glides over the water like a spectre
And yet it hums, and pounds its engines
Its lights illuminate brief stretches of water.
Soon it is just a collection of lights flying over the waters.
Slicing through the water strangely,
Unnaturally fast it takes itself away from me.
Alone in this harbour it disturbs the nights silence
Soon it is gone, and I am alone again.

Tues, 11th April 2006 (ish)
not quite sure why this should be one combined poem, but i did write it all in one sitting. Probably needs more polish, but I dont want to overwork it.

Violence

Pax

love at first sight

I do not believe in love at first sight
Pure hope alone can sustain that belief.
Such notions gather credit at midnight
But by morning we return to unbelief.
The face is such poor evidence;
Beauty does not live in faces, and yet
So strongly we wish for coincidence
That we burden ourselves with heavy regret.
Why should the universe grant us warning
In a single glace, a shadow’s motion,
An entirely stranger kind of seeing.
An entirely singular emotion.
I do not believe in love at first sight
But if I believed in love I would love you.

almost a proper sonnet. Alternative final line:
'But if I beleived then I would love you.'

my mother and the universe

this photo was taken in full colour. It just turned out this way

Refuses to be hidden

Nikko, Japan 2003

Holy Thursday Sunset

Holy Thursday, two thousand and six
Was the greatest sunset of my life.
Returning from swimming rain warmed waters,
Looked up at the convent, alone on the hill
I saw it was drenched from tower to steeple
In glorious light, more golden than eagle
It beckoned from its perch over Sydney.
Skies crowned above with imperial colour:
Clouds came alive with unforeseen splendour.
Suddenly out of those blankets of purple
There sprang forth an arch, brighter by second
I cannot recall rainbows more vivid,
For parallel soon a second arc crept
Together they stood in the darkening dusk.
The waves before me shimmered in colours
Half that of furnace, half that of sapphire
The light sank deeper in its orange bed
And the first clear sky of the day revealed
In a halo of Lapis for the hills.
Though rainbows must die, clouds soon turn to black
As darkness steals in, I would cry to miss
A greater beautiful sunset than this.

not the best, but i was proud i managed to fit it all into a ten-sylable meter

Darling Harbour, Sydney, 2003

i now have a camera again, thanks to the great generosity of Tebbs, whom the world does not appreciate as much as it should

Asakusa, Tokyo, 2004

True Story

In the gathering dusk I beached my canoe
The beach was shallow and muddy, with a tiny stream running through
From the waterfall that rattled softly in the distance.
Only the birds declared their existence.

Houses ringed the bay and boats sat inside it
But no human soul moved.

Slowly I was aware of music.
Softly a piano crept from a house perched on the cliff.
Slow chords trickled out;
Exquisitely sad, longing and lonely
But never hopeless, and somehow mystical.
I planted my paddle in the sand and stood enchanted.
And I wondered that I would never know the player who gave me such intimacy:
A song I had never heard before,
Nor will again, I feel.
Suddenly it stopped, and I was cold, and wet, and alone.

'A poem is never finished, only abandoned' - Paul Valery

other people's poems

i still havnt polished those australian poems, so here's a few of my favourite poems that anyone with an interest in poetry should read.

of primary importance:

TS Elliot - The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
Dylan Thomas - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Thomas Hardy - Afterwards
WB Yeats - He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
Phillip Larkin - This Be The Verse

and because i cant confine myself to five choices:

Robert Frost - Aquainted With The Night
Ted Hughes - The Thought Fox
Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ozymandius Of Egypt
Louis Macneice - Prayer Before Birth
George Gordon, Lord Byron - We'll No More Go A Roving

news

That last picture was taken two years ago. Three days ago i returned to exactly the same spot. Loads of my best pictures are from that trip to Austalia/Japan two years ago. Unfortunatly my trip this time was not nearly so fruitful, as i managed to lose my camera. So no new pictures for a long time, methinks. I did manage to write about six poems, all of which will hopefully appear once i've polished them. Anyway, here's one of my very first poems:

A Magical Time

I watch the earth, and sea, and sky,
The tranquil sky, blue as the sea beneath
A lone bird wheels among snowy clouds
Waves lapping softly on golden sands.
Grey stone, as if sculpted by angelic hands
Stacked in towers like monuments to an ancient god.
Forests as silent as birdsong at dawn
Far off mountains, blue with mists of the unknown
That roll into the far side of infinity.
Softly blazing sun, burning a trail of healing radiance
Baking the rocks, red as the heat of a thousand years.
My feet make tracks in the sand
I feel like an alien here.
But if I was not here, it would not even exist
For what is beauty, when none can see it?
This scene of more worth than any prince’s hoard.

this was also inspired by Aus, three years ago this one. My old english teacher made us enter poems for some kind of Hillindgon competition. This one came second, and it kinda sparked my whole interest in writing poetry. The title was fixed by the competition (because it is a terrible title)

Mortality

as viewed from Manly headland, Sydney

Favourite Verse

I have read every poem in this book.
I would open the book at any page
And read whichever poem was shorter
Or appeared easier to comprehend

The book was organised by theme, not author.
So I soon learned which sections I liked best;
At the beginning was Love, then Nature.
But I would always turn towards the end.

For there lived Contemplation, Time and Death.
Somehow I gravitated to the best,
Judging by the titles, the dates and topics,
Structure and Form, in time by the author

Eventually I decided to read
Every last poem, cover to cover
And I discovered that I like Keats less
But Yeats more, having seen them better.

A little old-fashioned, too many sonnets.
But many creases tell my affection.
And if it had never been given me
Then I would never be writing these lines.

Inhale

i think its innes, but i can actuallly remember who this is...

i was gratified (3)

i was gratified
to hear you talk to me
today though i still find it hard to imagine why
you spend time on me you are one of those
people who seem too nice and more kind to me than I would
expect even predict or understand
not that i complain of course i simply tell you because it puzzles me
i was gratified to hear
you talk to me because
this signified i was not to you totally
insignificant and still worthy of some comment you may even have walked
all the way over for the prime purpose of saying a few
words to me both times the conversation was initiated by you
and yet
i do not feel altogether
happy with this turn of events not from any fault of your
own but merely from my own incompetence and inability to deal with the
actuality of talking to you and
more than that you talking to me so i did not reply
adequately though i may have replied
politely and sensibly the point is that i did not reply in a way that would lead
the conversation on and in anyway disclose
my thoughts and feelings toward you so that i might have appeared
positively hesitant which is certainly
not the case so i was displeased to find that as i thought
i am inadequate to you and generally i
fail as per usual nevertheless
i still came out of that encounter with a newfound
respect and energy for the day so
i cannot help but feel the encounter was positive

fun with stream-of-consciousness. stupid blogger has the margins too thin.

Untitled

or, Cologne Station Ceiling

after sun, after rain

In winter,
i wished for spring.
now it is spring,
what will I wish for in summer?

Daffodils
newly come
but trees still bare;
yellow seems incongruous.

Early spring
was always thus?
seems strange time
when birdsong brighter than sky.

Grass already green,
winds still blow,
daffodils bend
but yellow for me is not yet hope.

Under cloud,
i do not believe.
under sun; summer will come:
trees green and no leaves underfoot.

Ribs for the sky

Progress

tokyo

What choice do i have

What choice do I have but to look at you
Every chance that I get. Do you think I planned
To stare until your radiant cheeks grew red?
I wish now I had never caught your eye

But who can blame me, when it is obvious
You cannot be ignored. Or so I believe
Though other men’s tastes be different, there is
Something about beauty which resonates

Do not feel the need to smile at me, it is all
Quite hopeless. Leave me to my folly,
We only embarrass one another.
But if you would truly show me some kindness,

Turn your face to profile. I have seen more
Sculptured features in statue and film,
But I would never give the name beauty
To one I had not seen in the flesh

As I give it to you. God preserve me
From such foolishness, and remind me of
Shakespeare, who believed Virtues flew t’ward beauty
Like moths to flame. Juliet could have been a

Witch, for all Romeo knew. Therefore I ask:
What right do you have, to make credible
Such preposterous notions of beauty
Which are dangerous to entertain.

i thought this was soppy crap, but my advisor disagreed, so here it is

How Do You Sleep At Night?

Like a stone worn past memory of what it was?
Like the putrid lake that will absorb anything?
I do not care whether you uncovered your evil or absorbed it
I wish you death tonight if your conscience allows you to sleep.
Tomorrow the partisans will drag your body through the town
Saintly widows will spit on you
Rabbis will piss on your face
Mothers will tear at your skin,
And tell their children to beat you with the soles of their shoes
You shall be taken to the telegraph wire
And hung upside-down with your whores and your cronies
While young girls cheer, and old men say to one another:
Justice has been done.
And all around the church bells begin to ring,
Because now we can sleep in our beds like brightest jewels
At the bottom of clear mountain lakes.

at last, a new poem.

The Tokyo International Forum

my favourite peice of architecture

"Inspiration is a jealous and impatient mistress"

Inspiration is a jealous and impatient mistress.
If you scorn her, turn away when she comes to you, she will not be quick to return
She has no time for tomorrow, for later, for just-a-minute and after-this
And if you try to force her, she laughs at your advances, and scorns your impotence
But if you sing for her, she will come

not really good enough for the blog (yes, i have done even worse poems), but what the hey, i'm running low on poetry to post

Cathedral

Nikko, Japan

Men Dancing

There are only three reasons why men dance:
1. They're camp
2. They're drunk (or stoned)
3. They're looking to get in with one of the girls

And of course, by the time you're drunk enough to dance, you're too drunk to stand up!
So it is with me, anyway.

Liftoff

tom

Hear no evil Speak no evil See no evil

this is actually the original carving from which the expression 'hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil' comes from. It's on a temple in Nikko, Japan.

If I Were A Bell

If I were a bell I'd ring
If I were a bird I'd sing
If I were a candle I'd burn
If I were a table I'd turn
When I am a plant I'll grow
When I am a train I'll go
When I am a record I'll play
When I am a speaker I'll say:
Because I'm a pen I'll write
Because I'm a lantern I'll light
Because I'm a bird I'll sing
And If I were a bell I'd ring.

Your Daily Dose of Sureality

You Are No Longer Necessary

tokyo

Memento Mori

Remember you are mortal
So the dead men say
Waste not your years upon this globe
For soon you shall be like us
In envy of the living
Whispering in their ears:
Remember you are mortal

Fire Of Heaven

Bad Trip

dean!

Shall I compare thee

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
You are cold and bitter and full of hate
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Like a rotten worm in a corpse
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
When you came into my life I loved you
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
And I treated you like a god, doing anything
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
Just to make you a little bit happier
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
So you repay me like like a whore
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By spitting on all my love
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.
And lying to me in your arrogance
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
You hurt me, so much,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
I can feel it like someone sucking the blood from my lungs
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
Your heart is like stone, stone
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
And ice. How could you do this to me
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
Never talk to me again. Stay away from my life
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
I hope you die.

the idea was better than the reality, but it still bears reading
i probably shouldve put it into iambic pentameter, but i am a lazy bastard after all

Photography Permitted

in a cologne church

Drink

I am clear when you buy me,
White when you break me
Grey on grey days
Blue on bright days
And brown when you adulter me
My name is water; I was with you
When you were born, I flowed around you
I was the dew when you woke with the Cockerel
I was the frost when you woke with the robins
I was the tears of your sister when you father died
And I also was the tears of your lover when you lost her
And your own tears when you found her.
I was the cool oasis that saved you in the desert
I was the blue mist that dampened your joy in November,
The white snow that brought you new joy in December
And the sheets of cold hail that stung you in March.
I was the storm you wonder at
I am the wave you cursed
I was the flood, but I killed your fire
I am the downpour, but I grew your harvest
I was in those hot sticky nights of summer
I was in the mellow mornings of the tropics
I am the ice that cut
But I was the ice that soothed your cuts
I am the river and I am the ocean
I was the rain, and I was your wine
I am within you, I am without you
I was your mother; I am your child
My name is water.

Important Notice

wales

Song of the Channeler

Lost and repeatedly found; Gnawed at and broken
And yet I am his most prized possession.
His teeth scar me, his anger breaks me, But
Without me there will be no glory

Others have touched his hands, I am not so proud
To believe I only can channel his mind.
And yet, his own hands cut me with his knife
Others are left merely to mechanical rape

But I am murdered sweetly every time I am used
Every time I am put to my purpose, a little of me dies
A little less remains, a little less sharp and alive
Until once again I am mutilated, to become once again as he first desired me.

Sometimes I think he is musing on me
Though I know how ridiculous that is
And I cannot read his thoughts, even as
They are acted upon me

This white space is my entire world.
The only worlds I am permitted to inhabit are those I build from my own blood
And ever he stands above me, harsh or piteous,
Directing my slow decay.

And yet, I shall never complain of my fate
Though I am but a stub now, I live on in the dust
Of his vision. In myself there has been written a great symphony
And I alone have truly seen that poetry.

i can guarante you have completely misinterpreted this poem
and i need a better title again

Evidence for the Existence of God 2

or, Clouds over Cologne

Five things i can do better than anyone else i know of

Wearing Ties
Buttering Toast
Cutting Bread
Directing House Drama
Quoting Bob Dylan

not that much, when you think about it

Evidence for the Existence of God

or, Poor Lighting in Cologne Cathedral.
I'm not really very happy with either of those titles.

Petal

A petal (rose, naturally), encased in glass like a crucifix, never to touch the ground,
But still it falls.
Into your closing hand, closing and grabbing at the strings of lesser lives
And rose petals. Like cyanide, but without the bittnerness, whispering that this time, and this time, and this time, there will be no crash, only a gentle fall in the wind
Of rose petals, grey this time, and no romance. Only you and I, on either end of the petal, as we struggle to find each other, but the petal is still falling and weaving and tumbling and twisting and turning and i do not beleive we shall ever touch at all, but shall remain, like rose petals, encased in glass, never to die, never to fall, never again to touch.

This Will Hurt For A Second

a building in tokyo, viewed from the ground look up

fragment

my shoes squeaked on the hot rubber floors and my footsteps echoed off the walls as I pounded up the corridor. The heat of summer had come at last and had blown all of the schools occupants out into the shady yard. As I rounded yet another empty corner I heard the sounds of the students outside and i thought:

Statistics Exam Question

If the probability that I hate you is 0.68 and the probability that I'm coming to kill you is 0.72 and the probability that I'm coming to kill you given that I hate you is 0.921, then

i) Calculate the probability that I hate you and i'm coming to kill you

ii) Hence, start running.

Shed

japan

Malicious Intent

dean

The Minutes That Slip Through Your Fingers

The minutes that slip through your fingers
From the hours that make up the day
The moment you catch as it lingers
Before it slips away

Are these the best days of your lives
Those seconds we could not replace?
Were you sitting in heaven that moment,
Asleep in the infinite space?

The minutes that drift before dawn
As you lie awake in your bed
The hours that pass before slumber
As you try and empty your head

The days you’ve spent at the window
Chasing the clouds in their flight
The week that was lost to black canvas
When you tried to write with your sight

Are these the minutes that time reclaims
From the youth who stole it’s sweetness?
Did those moments even exist?
Or did we dream them in our eage’ness?

One night when we are alone together
I shall find the moment that lingers
And catch it in my waiting palm
The minutes that slip through your fingers.

Defies a Caption

Who Writes Poetry?

No-one writes poetry. Obsessives and stalkers start by writing poetry. Start by praising her beauty and talking about your dreams and in a month you’ll be peeking through her window and stammering like a dying man. Sure, they all say they melt for poetry. But it’s too creepy, too difficult for stupid girls to understand. No-one can be equal with someone who stays up past dawn writing about them. No-one wants a man like that, a man who writes poetry. You want a man of action. A man without soul.

The Gods Have Been At Work Here

no idea.

Roman Roads

Roman Roads, straight as the sun
Open and endless, through my mind they run
Wait not a day,
Go on your way,
Down Roman Roads.

Spanish Silver, bright as blood
Hidden and waiting, buried in the mud
Seek it no more,
Stray not from the law,
For Spanish silver.

Persian Princes, noble as night
Cruel and lonely, blinded by sight
Return your knife,
Give not your life
To Persian Princes.

England

christmas holidays are over :(

The Memory of Pain

It’s a strange thing that something utterly immediate at the time can fade into nothingness so quickly. A couple months ago I shattered my knuckle, resulting in unbearable pain. But oddly enough, when I look back on it now, the experience is so painless, so sanitised, that I wonder why I made such a fuss. Not only that, I actually begin to think that it may have been a good experience, somehow character-building. I can remember it happened, I can remember I never wanted it to happen again and I gritted my teeth, but I can’t actually feel it.
It’s like the memory of a smell. I can remember roses smell good, I could even recognise the smell. But I just can’t smell it in my memory. With sight and sound it’s different. If you were asked to conjure up an image of your house, you could probably do it. Not just remember that your house is blue, that it looks ugly, that you prefer red houses, but actually remember the image of the house, and be able to see it again when you close your eyes. Now try and close your eyes and remember what pain feels like.
Of course, when I say you can conjure up the memory of your house, you can do it, but only up to a point. Even if you think you can see it in your mind, I could ask you the colour of the flowers in the window and you probably won’t know. That's because your memory doesn’t really have an image imprinted on it like a computer. Memory just takes the best parts, the one’s you’re most interested in, and forgets the rest. Nonetheless, you still can make an image, however vague, in your mind. But you can’t recreate pure physical pain. Pain isn’t even something with lots of details to remember, like a song, or a picture. Pain is just a pure emotion, in fact even less than an emotion, just a pure physical state. It’s like not being able to recall the colour red, in fact even more elemental than that.
So what about Pavlov and his dogs or Skinner and his rats? It’s been proved that you can condition an animal by punishing it with physical pain. Could it be that only humans forget the actuality of pain, that other animals have no such difficulties in remembering it? More likely, I think, that other animals, no matter how simple can learn and remember that pain is not something they wish to happen to them again.
Perhaps I’m looking at this too much from the perspective of a middleclass English white boy. After all, a beaten dog may wince even at the sight of the whip. However, even then I think that what is remembered is the emotional anguished caused by the physical pain, and not the pain itself. Under the influence of pain, at the extremes, one can be persuaded to anything (after all, think of room 101 in 1984, or if you prefer non-fiction, of the countless false confessions by torture throughout history). There is no denying the power of imprinting in such a state, but I think that it makes the lack of recall even more odd.
On the other hand, it would be bizarre if we could in fact recall pain. Unlike other memories, like a voice, pain is not limited in time to a specific event or even series of events, but is constant in life, always ready to be awakened. Being able to recall pain would be like being able to recall what it feels like to be asleep. Imagine the absurdity of people yelping in pain or falling asleep while re-living their memories! And if you could turn pain on in order to remember it, then you would have to be able to turn it off just as easily, something the human body could never allow because it knows the inherent weakness of the human mind.
If it were not for our ability to forget our pain, so much of the violence, perseverance, sacrifices and striving of humanity might never have come to pass.

The Path