memory

Movies in the night

commonplace book, history, true stories / /

Another image that enters my mind unbidden:

My brother and I are spending the night at Grandma & Grandpa Scott’s house. We’re pretty young … I might be 8 and my brother 6 or 7. It’s the mid-70s. At our grandparents, we go to bed pretty early … say by 10 p.m. This night, Gus and I know that the original King Kong is on TV, and we are determined to see it. We stay awake talking in bed (we’re in the guest bed together), and then we quietly sneak into the family room and turn on the TV, ever so quietly, and watch a 40-year-old (only 40 years!?) black & white movie, listening carefully for the footsteps of our grandparents. I don’t think we were caught.

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Early winter morning with my father

commonplace book, history / /

An image of my father that enter my mind at odd times:

I’m in high school in the early 80s, it’s the dead of winter and early in the morning, so it’s still dark out, and very cold. My Dad always got up at 6 a.m. and was at his gas station by 6:30. I’m sleeping on the couch in the front room of his small house, and it’s a school morning … my mother must have been out of town. At 7:15, I’m awoken by the sound of my father coming in the front door to wake me up and take me to school. I look up bleary-eyed from the couch to see his face in the small window at the top of his front door, never locked. When I remember this event, I think of my father’s love for me, often hard for him to express, but obvious to me here.

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You always remember your first time

musings, technology / /

I remember the first day I ever got on the Internet. I was an English teacher working at a camp for gifted high school students, and a technologist was there talking about this thing called “the Internet” and how it was going to change everything. It sounded fascinating, so when I returned home a few weeks later, I scrimped together some money and purchased 2 more megs of RAM for my Mac LC, bringing the total up to a whopping 4 MB, and a screamin’ fast 14.4 modem. Then I got online using a dialup account I purchased, and stayed on for 12 hours straight. That technologist was right, and it was blindingly obvious to me that day: the Internet was going to change everything. 

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Memory memories

musings / /

Some gathered thoughts on memory:

Wanting to remember & forgetting, or knowing you’ll forget 

My father’s memories, & a chosen few passed along to me – of those chosen (or random) few, how many do I pass along?

Emotion recollected not in tranquility, but sometimes in seething emotion, in inner turmoil or pain

Flow of memories, inspired by surroundings & other memories

"I remember deciding to remember the moment"

Linear vs. thematic storytelling

Ways to jog the memory: string on the finger – notes to self – phone calls – emails – Art of Memory – Simonides

Alzheimer’s – loss of memory

Mistaken memories – false memories – brainwashing

Mnemosyne

Collective memory

Old movies & videos for the family – photos passed down

The attachment of new memories, & new meanings, to family objects

Sensory memory: auditory, visual, textual, smell, taste

Deja vu

Proust’s Madeleine

Fune the Memorious – the importance of forgetting

How will we be remembered? How can we be remembered? What can we do to insure our memory lives on? 

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