memory

Day 3474, more memories.

Daily picture, My thoughts

I want to write about my past, and it makes sense to start at the beginning, simply because that’s where it began. The problem is that most of what I remember is a series of loose facts, such as living there, being with those people, having that job, and whether it was enjoyable or not, or something in between. I can remember what my old room looked like, mostly because I have seen that one picture of the room from time to time, it’s just the picture I remember holding in my hands if I’m honest. I actually don’t know what it is to remember in the sense of reliving it in my mind. 

What I know of the time from before I moved out of my parents’ house is almost nothing. I can string together a story, I remember the story of my youth. I can point to the tree I climbed when I was 11, and looking down from that vantage point for the first time feels like it is etched in my memory, like what vertigo feels like whenever I experience it now. I remember feeling vertigo in that tree, and more than 30 years later, when standing on a 10-story-high balcony. I recall many strong emotions, and they are often associated with a specific place. However, the feelings are real, but I have no certainty that the locations are correct. 

After I moved out, the story became richer, perhaps because I had finally started living my own life, and the vacation was over. The steps I took now, I did for the first time on my own; I paid attention to where I was going. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am a skeptic and don’t entirely trust my own memories, except for the basic facts that I have lived in different places, attended various schools, and held other jobs. Later experiences now taint most of the feelings that accompanied them, and my feelings about specific events have also evolved over the years. I also believe that if you are currently experiencing strong emotions, such as a breakup, you should recognize that you are the last one to have an objective assessment of what is happening. It often takes time to acknowledge that the strong feelings were, for the most part, an exaggeration and a reflection of how the world around you expects that you should react, how your background taught you what an appropriate memory should look like.   

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Day 2393, remembering.

Daily picture

The picture above is more or less what I saw in my mind while looking at the light on a ceiling. I decided to take a picture of that colorful light, and my phone didn’t do a good job, it more or less showed what the light looked like in reality and not as I saw it in my mind.

Reality is often dull compared to what we make of it in our minds. Hard facts will show that bleakness and after excepting forces us to repaint that reality using the memory of what we saw the first time in our mind.

We often live by following the flawed memory of what we were dreaming ones.

Day 1766, inspired memory.

Daily picture, My thoughts, Poetry

Our memory has some strange habits. We are good in remembering faces when we see one, a lot of us will forget the name attached to the face, but the face itself stays in our memory for a long time. Describing a face is much more difficult, just like describing an old house you lived in or your first car. When we try to recall a visual memory we often only see a part of that what was reality, we bind these parts together and assume that it is a good representation of that reality. When you see a picture of the car you once had, you recognize it immediately, you will also recognize it if you only see an outline, which suggests that the details are not necessary for your memory. This is why you also recognize an old friend from behind or in the distance.

When I look at old pictures I want to believe that I remember what I see and what was going on, but I just remember what I see on the picture, I remember seeing this before. When I see pictures from when I was really young, I remember only that I have seen the pictures before. This can be tricky, because you like to think that you remember other things in the picture to, like a couch, or a painting on the wall. Maybe you do remember, maybe you just remember it from that same picture, or from an other picture that hangs in the hallway of you parents depicting the same room.

What I wrote above, is just how I see it at this moment. I have read about it in the past, but I couldn’t tell you the names of the books or what was written in it in details. I stored some of that knowledge in my brain and that combined with my own thinking produces this. When we think about a subject and start to talk or write about it, we might use the same process as we do when we remember a face, or when we look at old pictures.

Imagine a car designer. The designer has seen hundreds of cars, and learned all kinds of visual and constructional rules. Do you think, that when they start designing a new car, that they calculate, and rationalize every line and shape? I don’t think so. I think that they stand knee deep in all the memories of cars and other shapes. From that memory mud, fumes rise up to impregnate the rational mind, I guess you can call this also inspiration. I think the same thing happens when you write a book, or tell a story from your past, it is all loosely connected with reality, an inspired feeling.

Today’s inspiration is from Day 1499.

Looking

through old picture albums

in my head

~

with a mind

that fades

stares

contracts

~

and leaves me

with a feeling

that I remember

Constructed memory.

My thoughts, Philosophy

cur7.jpg

Curacao, 1994

Why do I think we all build a structure, a narrative, that explains or bears our existence?

First of all, it’s a story I’ve been telling myself for many years, if I tell you about its origin, I guarantee you that it is…a structure. It probably started while reading a book, but I don’t know what book or where I read it.

We all been in situations where you are certain about a situation, certain facts you remember from the past. Till you meet someone that was with you at the time and recollects it totally different.

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