Forgetting

This morning, I forgot the password to my laptop. Just yesterday, all I had to do was graze my hand on the keyboard and my fingers would move by themselves. But this morning, I touched the keyboard and my fingers have forgotten where to go.

After the 10th character, they searched aimlessly at the top of the keyboard but could not find anything, no sign, no traces of the last few characters that completed the password string. I was very happy when I woke up this morning. At 6:30 before the sun rose, I was up, doing things, willing myself to not return to bed, as I have, always, wanted to be a morning person. But on the first hour, I felt, already tired. So I made myself a cup of coffee, which I still haven’t had. I said, I’ll do a yoga sequence prompted online before I began working. But just as I had lifted the screen, my hands touched the keyboard, and,… nothing. I saw the first 10 characters in an image in my mind when I closed my eyes. But the last ones, were erased, haphazardly, but with no clue as to what they were. The letters, seemed to me like they were standing on the edge of a cliff, left to right with the cliff on the far right, all the other characters in the password string have disappeared, as if they have fallen off the cliff.

I felt myself search for words in my head — violently turning over shelves, books, notes trying to find clues but I couldn’t find one . And then a tiredness set in. I felt myself exhausted from the all the distractions. I felt also, very afraid, not just because I had no access to the computer, but because I felt, for sure, that I was beginning to lose capacity in my brain. I have felt, less strong physically in the last years, a few lines have begun to appear on my face, and gray strands of hair have arrived. I welcomed all the physical changes and didn’t bother myself with them, because I always felt sharp– in the mind, in exercises of conversation and problem solving, but now, I felt a violent dulling. And I sat for a while, and thought, I have not sat in a while with the objective of just sitting — always, one movement was to be multitasked with another — work while listening to music, rest while checking emails on a phone. Even with just how I wrote this last sentence “I have not sat in a while with the objective of just sitting” sounds to me like I’m planning on something else as I sit. I had wanted to squeeze the most out of time, of all the times I still owned, but then I look back to the last couple of days, and they were all blurred. And slowly, the letters came trickling in, the last characters in the string of password have arrived, as if they were late to a party and went in line, next to the other characters in a string of passwords.

So today, I told myself that I would sit down– and write all the things I have to remember. And then, I will rest. For how long, I don’t know, doing what, I don’t know. No more agenda — no high hopes of demanding productivity out of rest. Just. Rest. (Written January 8, 2022)