My memory has always been fragmentary. You could call me absentminded. I do have a collection of vivid memories that bubble to the surface every so often, triggered by a small set of emotional states, music, sounds, scents, or what have you. But they are fragments.
I can't fathom the minds of those who remember a vast amount of concrete details. My memories usually take the form of emotions, visions, rhythms, scenes, sounds, not facts or data. I was never very good at writing tests requiring the regurgitation of facts...math, science, history, etc.
And I have a poor sense of time.
To me, memory is a narrative that is incessantly reconstructed anew.
__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 12-16-2010 at 08:04 AM..
|