Thomas Lowe Taylor -- BEFORE I WOULD REMEMBER TO FORGET

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Before eating, I would remember the words chosen are still there along the manner of the style of forgetting within word choice the entire collapse of centuries of words their own position in act in memory what has passed before us along the way waving one hand free enough to recall what it is you intended to write down the centuries passing among us is not so very far away at all.
Before I remembered what to say exactly was in the moment taken, the choice made against time itself, times bygone by in centuries passing out from what is taken exactly turned aside was not so much remembered as the specific choice made against time itself, her lips, the words not taken from the pool or substance but unintended from beyond time's intercessions, you are that word or choice in that specific moment the pen pulled aside her winsome lips eating what is remembered not so far away but held between sentences, sentenced by doubt in the time remembered by the choices made in the moment said aside or other.
But still, before I would remember I would also forget the choice made in the word remembered, not taken exactly but held out from however far back one would want to go beyond the thing seen the thing said the word remembered the choice made the time forgotten, the centuries passing out beyond the thing seen or the word chosen or the time itself remembered was not so much an act or a decision or a thing played out, increment, place, item dissolved in its own specificity as held or torn aside, was how you were at lips or saying, this is the time you remembered to forget in word choice taken or held aside, a rotating cuff or cough, but the time spent, the day pulled aside in the centuries passing into now was how you were in act in time the word chosen or not remembered exactly but held firm and taken for what it is, increment of time's passing position or attitude or attribute of what is overheard beyond the day or door or doubt at the centuries passing in their own attributes of what has been taken aside within choice or the moment seized, time spent, word taken.
But before I remembered to forget the time taken, or word spoken at, spoken out, was not forgotten but time taken aside or outer, he was also healed within the act of time's passing down the centuries in their own position aside or outer, other was who you were tonight at thing mentioned again its own increment discretion provided out, outer, the centuries passing in their own time made certain of who you are in that as taken out aside or outer what's laid aside her own smile or lips speaking forward forms the centuries, too, in their own particular resonance.
Before I spoke I made certain, after I noticed the position within what is also there is not so much how you are within word choice, but as time taken and time remembered as set again against your own passing through various times within that specific choice was also here among various substances, I would also forget to remember the time chosen to forget when what ails us in the centuries ending other presences were not recalled (a different choice) was still held firm or close in its own specific resonance.
How you are still. Now you have spilled out the unending time repetition at the end of time's centuries say we are still remembered in our own choices, vocable present set against the rolling of the centuries themselves our pitiable silence in the face of choices met or made, we have passed this destiny no further words are met again in remembered times are held before what is still there still, being who we are.
Tough no outer. Are you still you, but held aside no other bothers to be the same you'd call recall the fashion of the ages their own memory not so much a social distinction as much as the day of the ages also held within but shared shores resounding special disturbances are met inside time itself no doubt he calls them back again you say the door is open, opening out in terraces and valleys sublime no showers stall your clime and chime, he'd been there before the choice was made and that's the key, that's the clue, that's the space to be filled in choices made without remembering, in words spoken or chosen without respect for the time they are taken from, without the destiny of the centuries themselves, without any historicity other than the word and the choice.
And so perhaps you are no longer the victim of the time you have portrayed yourself to be, and in becoming other you have forgotten the project itself as what has been laid aside is no memory, no choice even, but the thing itself bereft of the context you'd imagined was left to become what is still not there in the yard, down in the valley with the sunlight defining another foreign distance in calm recall no doubters ring their own musk in time spent aside or outer was still removed beyond the time of time itself no curling snout the gestures themselves more familiar than the choices met or made within silence calls you down again against what it is these calling hours the centuries in their specific unwinding time has set them down in this which is, or in that which has passed within us is not so much the nature of the choice in its epistemological denseness but the true resonance of the hour in which we do not remember but still come up with what is said, some allowance for what was eaten, for instance, the smile still upon her lips in the centuries we have seen and in what we imagine to be possible at least at this choice we have made which distinguishes, finally, one word from another.
I waited all the years for this to pass. I waited in not-remembering just exactly what the words themselves were, but still I remembered to forget in the midst of making choices, at the center of the words themselves was a notion a theory a history of forgetting to remember what was said or chosen and the centuries themselves are still there still in what is said, but called out against time and said recall was not the thing itself, is there ever a "thing itself?"
Now you, too, are still. Perhaps you are a word you do not remember. You are still a choice in that moment and that places you in a century now or other or aside, but still made against time, against memory and still eating. Her lips remembered. You are her lips remembered, letters written, or at least held aside and yet affirmed, made resonant, made into time itself in repetition of the hours said or laid aside as you are not outer but handed over from one possession to another, certainly you must belong somewhere, and in word choice you make that known, you come into being, you step aside and let the centuries pass among you calling from side to side, into now.
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What is neither spent nor claimed is also not remembered but remains still in the realm of choice, just as what is understood is no longer a choice and is therefore also not remembered. History is time without memory. What is remembered is not history but is still a choice, and in what is remembered as history is not remembered as choice. History is not a choice but is still a word. And what you have left behind is not so much history as time itself, made insistent in its becoming what it is, and it is the choices made in the words that are remembered as they are set down by what becomes insistent, for in what becomes insistent we find the necessity of what is recalled as the evidence for what has been chosen. No choice but in the things we have made insistent, revolving as they do between silence and obscurity, and the calm insistence of the things chosen becomes the history of that selective remembering of who we are in that specific moment, as if the centuries themselves had some reason for being what they are, choices made, words made things, time spent among the ruins of the words themselves, act, self, becoming, choice, word, word again, and finally, the remembering of what it is.
And what lies beyond those circumlocutions is neither void nor resemblance but the nature of what has been omitted. We are still defined by what we have omitted; we are made still by those omissions, for they have no place in time, just as there is no time in these omissions, for they are timeless. A timeless omission has no history, and if we are ourselves made silent, then we are also omitted from the very history we seem to remember. And that is what it is like living without history, without time, without memory and without omission. In the time after history, there is the photograph and the word. Neither is made one as neither is similar to memory, for memory is a choice without any omissions. Memory includes history when it is a choice even when it is about nothing, or about silence, or even about itself. History is also the memory of memory itself, of remembering. It is difficult to encounter oneself in history, in time, or in remembering. We only encounter ourselves in choice, or in words, for each word is a memory which lies beyond choice, a choice with no remembering. A word has no memory, but is the product of the choice which was made before remembering.
The silence of history is its palpable destiny, its own choice to be what it is. And history is silent. It may be benevolent or cruel, but it is as silent as memory itself. The history of silence may even become a clue to what has been omitted from the self which seeks its own identity. History is no identification for the self, only its location, and the location of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. The one is an omission of the other, how you are held against the light, the smile on her lips, or eating. If we are neither silent nor remembered, then we may become the history of ourselves, just as what is not spoken is also not heard but still may become a choice and, therefore, a memory; a silent memory, the history of a choice. You are still there, at the table, pen in hand, scribbling furiously at the yellow pad, wondering who you are, deprived of history, omitted by silence, made insistent by your choices, made summary by the history of your acts, not perhaps by their continuity but by the mere fact of their existence, neither verified nor remembered, merely still and silent, made into time by emplacement, by insistence, by recall and doubt, by repetition and by time.
Time is what is left alone by history. You are this rotating spindle of choices, of words, of pattern and insistence, by omission and recall, by vocabulary. If there is some ether to be made whole, to relive choice, for instance, then we plough ahead into the indefinite, or we stop short and hold on with both hands to the pen hovering over the yellow pad. We hold onto the chisel and drag choices from within and gouge them off of the page with splinters and shards of history flying to the left and right. We make history when we make choices, not the other way around. We hold still in calm insistence to what we have made and do not let go. We forage ahead into the gloom of our own omission from ourselves, as if what we have done might reassure us of our being here at all when it is really the other way around. We are finally defined by our omissions and by our silences, for they are what separate us from our insistences, from choice, even from our words. We are what we do not say. For what we speak about is only our insistence on being who (or what) we are, not what we might become. And the photograph is a choice, but it is not who we are. The photograph represents an omission of what we might become.
If we could remember who we are in the midst of speaking, we would surely fall silent, and we would become the history we seek to define by our presence. So contradictory. The moment, then, becomes this resonant absolute; it becomes our captivity, for in choosing to become who we really are, we become invisible and we finally evade our history, our choices. If we are to become free, it is by evading choice and time and the subsequent omissions which seem to define us. As we leave the realm of choice we enter the reality of the words themselves, words deprived of the choices which give rise to them at all. And we choose that. Or do we? We pass into the room and it disappears. There is color, or light, but there is no time. In choosing to become ourselves we escape from time and occupy the very omissions we have neglected to notice at all. Or we leave time and become choice. Or we simply become the words that we are. All distinctions fade into the very moment which imprisons us. As we become ourselves, we cease to be, and it is no death that we inhabit, for death is the fact of the history we have embraced in our attempt to make choices. We abandon choice in favor of the words we make. We decline into being in a time without necessity or choice.
And if that is what it means to become free, then it is both our grace and our burden to allow it in ourselves, if we even have that choice. Nor is it simply "process." That's far too bland, too easily confused with remembering, or which choice. If history is being, then it is finally a confusion in which each comes to resemble the other. Surely freedom is that which cannot be defined, only something which can be evidenced in our selves as a motion, or a giving-way to what is there already--it is a moving-through which occurs at the beginning and ending of each thought, of each word. It is a word itself and so has no other to it. Being free is not a choice, for choices lie in the realm of history for their context. Being free is the history for their context. Being free is the totally contradictory state of no state at all. It is neither a process nor a word, but what lies beyond them both, what descends into them to give them their distinctness, their appositive calm. And as we choose to become free, we leave the realm of choice altogether and enter the stateless state which lies beyond the self. We dance, or go for long walks, or stand still. We exist in the spaces between words, quite aside from choice, from history, from time. In becoming words, we abrogate the self. Thus the horrible tension of the poem, the inevitable discord of the harmony of the self in its transcendence from its desire to become the poem to the final promise of release from words in their specificity and distance from what is real, or at least from what we choose to think of as such. We roll over in the middle of the night and go back into the dream with its particular syntax for the unknown. We approach the unknown and embrace it with our omissions. We continue.