Codex of the Synapse: Folio C5.3

The Memory Forest

 
 
 
"I found myself within a shadowed wood,
for I had lost the path that doesn't stray."
 
 
I don't believe this wood is a world at all. I think it's just a sort of in-between place"

 

 

A Synapse Myth: A forest, filled with innumerable, evenly spaced trees, extends in all directions. The trees are identical at first glance. Upon closer inspection each tree reveals distinguishing marks. However, as one withdraws to half the distance between any two trees, these marks are no longer discernible, and the forest becomes once again endless and uniform, an arboreal tessellation.

Each tree contains a distinct sense-memory, revealed first in the reading of the markings (which resemble Pattern Language Script) and then by touch. The visitor to the wood can access a memory, from a particular instant in his past, recalled in the fullness of all the senses. In doing so, according to the myth, he has left the Synapse, and entered the lattice of neighbor world.

How can a memory, experienced in the life of one person, constitute a world? Interestingly, The Keepers make no distinction between the recalling of a memory and the experiencing of a neighbor-lattice. They use the words "world" and "memory" interchangeably, to describe the world/memory complex containing the essence of both.

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