you think of something. you have a realization. all the dots align and your intuition responds. something emerges from the subconscious. you analyze it, you decode it, you put it into “conscious” terms. you repeat it to yourself, you remember it, you apply it to practice. some mornings, the words reemerge as you drift in and out of sleep on the brink of waking. you integrate it, you see it everywhere. you fall asleep and wake up for a year, two years. you feel things and you don’t. you learn and forget. is it still there? at the end of each day, do you still remember or are you tired? a cloud of smoke or vapor in the atmosphere of the city. a patch of dry pigment incorporated into the pallet, discreetly altering the hue of each new paint mix. the invisible sounds of drifting through the empire. do i still remember the words?