[i]I write too slowly and think too fast. Ideas float across my mind ill formed and distorted. Like a clamour assaulting from without. Well I’ll pick one up. One among a multitude played with for a time. Maybe my hand will drift to the page and write something down in a hurried script. But always too late and never the original thing. End up shoulders slouched sat like a man with nothing to say. Sometimes I experience a sudden spirit of resistance. Pen writes quickly producing words communicating nothing and resonating with no one. Well an idea occurs – have a thought fully formed. A thought properly framed in the mind, all undulations traced. Upon the attempt inevitably a chain reaction occurs, thoughts forming in clusters crowding away in divergent directions forging into unfamiliar presumably new territory. As we go a sense that progress is always positive, an indulgence of the minds wandering. Eventually old thought gets discarded, new thought jumps up to take the place vacated. An endless cycle of new replacing old, just rewind and repeat. But at times of reflection the mind returns to those old thoughts, the detritus of past and fruitless labours. A common misconception: any idea once thought can be conjured again through some exercise of will. Minds seen as treasure troves of thoughts old new and undiscovered. To recall any old thing just put yourself into some previous configuration of body and soul. But sometimes clocks cannot be turned back. Well, what then?
Solution: A diary of all that is thought, essentially a person on a page.
Complication: Solution of such magnitude so as to curtail all future mental activity.
Resolution: Problem somewhat solved[/i]
A man sat alone writing at a wooden desk. Nondescript overalls, black hair slicked back, a tidy appearance. The frantic weaving back and forth of pen on page the only noise in the dimly lit room. A lack of any furnishing save the desk and chair. The floor covered with papers scrunched up or ripped apart. Face almost touching the desk as with a frenzied flourish he finished. Threw the pen now discarded onto the floor. Chair pushed back and up he stood. Wades through the paper mounds, opens the door, exits. A room entirely still with sheet of paper blank side up on desk. Paper artefact of a departed world. Signed at the bottom, ‘Person B’, it read:
[i]
My clothes have the label ‘B’ so I am Person B.
Every morning I write that sentence. First thing. Get up, come in here, write that down. Because every morning is the first morning. Today: wake up, don’t know where or who I am. A note on the chair next to the bed: ‘door on the right’. So I put the note back down, take the door on the right. Piece of paper on the desk. Turn it over, starts: ‘My clothes have the label ‘B’ so I am Person B.’ Below: 'Every morning I write that sentence. First thing… ’
Because this note explains it to me. Every morning I forget. So every morning I write something down. Discard the old message; replace it with the new. So, what do I write? Start with the letter on the desk, read it twice, three times, four. Start to remember. A fog drifting away from my mind. I had a plan, have a plan, to escape this endless cycle. This got me excited, ended up down on my knees on the floor scrambling about in the old letters. Some were nothing. Frantic scribbles with no words and no sense. Others could be put together. A puzzle with more pieces than I had to hand. I’m not meant to remember anything essential, remembering breaks the system. I know there’s a building with 2 doors. One of them is my escape. I don’t know how any of us in the letters know this. We also don’t know why there should be an escape. But if there is, you or I may find it.
Person B [/i]
I sort of know where I’m going here, but would appreciate any comments on what is essentially a prologue. Essentially I would like to know whether its just too obscure. I find it hard to separate what I know about whats happening from what the reader will know, any tips on this?