What if ?

If our bodily cells constantly die and renew, what is our constant? Our physical matter being temporary, what if all we are is our memories? Our brain constantly responds to and shapes our 'reality'. retains and forgets information, depends on memory to decide what to do next.

What if the Swirl is a temporary loss of memory, a space where normal continuity is replaced by a threat to survival?  When the Swirl invades a person, the illusion of order is gone, linear time is halted, equilibrium is lost, logical thinking no longer possible. 'Dark matter' or 'the unconscious' is the Swirl habitat. and there lies a bottomless tangle of nightmarish images. Or perhaps a Maelstrom.

What if the self is a kind of nothingness, always trying to become a something, and failing to do so? As Sartre had it, life is a constant drama of bad faith.

What if the self is a madly rational void?  If so, the Swirl may be an alternative self, a doppelganger that lives in the dark, and sometimes emerges to threaten the self that thinks it owns the light.

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'Dag Solstad's protagonists (Shyness and Dignity 1996) observe their lives as if they belong to someone else.'

'Diving for Seahorses: The Science and Secrets of Memory' Hilde and Ylva Ostby