Dec. 16, 2004
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I have a memory of a 7-tonne African elephant. A huge database of life in thirty years is squeezed into this tiny human brain. With the bad and the good, comes the useless. I am an organic library of useless knowledge and worthless information. Faster than a flipping encyclopedia. More powerful than a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Able to leap amnesia in a single bound. Look. Inside my head. It’s a thought. It’s a time warp. It’s a memory.
Far from being a chaotic scrambled mess, memories are compartmentalized and reviewed regularly. Childhood memories, pre-pubescent memories, the teen years, the young adult years, happy times, bad times, birthdays, injuries, family gatherings, heartbreaks, arguments, general feeling of sorrow, ecstatic moods, anger, walking, looking, falling, remembering…
I remember remembering. I have a terrible case of memoritis, if such a disease exists. It is a frightening experience – remembering remembering. Many times I have taken walks and stopped and thought to myself, you will remember this moment but I have no idea why. Insignificant, inappropriate and uninteresting moments of complete nothingness. Others reflect on special events, most people remember occasions of joy and pain. I remember moments that have no meaning. No real meaning in life.
Not only do I bear in mind my own memories, but memories of others as well. Memories they shared with me and forgot themselves. Grandma’s fleeting thoughts on coconut grating, time is a concept measured in coconuts she once said. Grandpa’s existential theories of existing in the world as minute organisms, we live in God’s potbelly he believed. His tall tales often bordered on spiritual enlightenment on a good day and religious propaganda on a bad one. Then there are the conversations, uncle this had with aunty that, about this and that. Dialogues and monologues reeling in my mind like a never-ending movie script.
Even memories of unknown faces in unknown places squat in my memory bank. I would not mind these aliens if not for the havoc they sometimes wreak in my brains. These are the strangers, perhaps from a past life, who attempt to scramble memories and lead me to confusion.
I believe it was William Stafford who once said, “Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.”
I have many buckets collecting in many wells. How and why I have become a collector of buckets is a mystery even to me. Perhaps that is the only thing I don’t recall. I have just always been. To survive such a malady/natural ability is not an easy task. One has to constantly remember that they are just pictures, words and ideas in the head. It is strictly storage only, not to be used to incur suffering, injury or destruction. It is rarely needed to save the world or to help the blind old lady with the wooden leg cross a busy street.
So essentially, I have 7-tonnes of memories resting in a million buckets and I have no idea how they got there, why they are there and what potential use they have.
So I live on the words of William Stafford who wrote, “Been on probation most of my life. And the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments count for a lot – peace, you know.”
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