MEMORY?

 

MEMORY            

 

If memory wiped would I forget how to eat?

If memory wiped would I forget how to drink?

If memory wiped would I forget to run from danger?

              If memory wiped would I know danger?

 

If memory wiped would I know where I stand?

If memory wiped would I know the face in the mirror?

If memory wiped would I know the mirror?

 

If memory wiped does memory abhor a vacuum?

If memory wiped does memory fill the vacuum?

              If memory wiped do I know there is a vacuum?

 

If memory wiped where does it go?

              If memory wiped do I know where to find it?

 

If memory wiped would I miss it?

If memory wiped would I know I miss it?

 

If memory wiped am I dead?

If memory wiped am I reborn

From There is a Place I Go  a collection of 29 poems and two stories published 2023.

An essay.

MEMORY?   

I’m beginning to believe everything is fiction in one form or another, including this essay! 

If everything is fiction in one form or another, memories must be fiction, or partially, so the next question is: are the lies, little, big, white or otherwise, the truth of us?

Do we fictionalize our own lives as we go?  Do we even realize it if we do? Enough of this conjecture, let me tell you a story. Or an anecdote if you wish to name it so.

The aftermath of my father’s funeral.  Sitting with my cousins swapping stories of family holidays, and no doubt so much more but lost now, or maybe in back-up memory. Lost too is what, and how, and who initiated talking about the film shows my dad used to put on for my cousins when small.  My cousin whose own father had died when they were age ranges primary to early secondary.  I say it that way because if I ever knew what their individual ages were when their father died, I can’t bring it forth. So, I’m playing safe and going for general rather than particular. Their father the oldest of six, my father the next one down. When his brother died my father stepped in a sort of surrogate father, the film nights part of that mourning process I suppose. Again, though this is me transposing thoughts onto a situation. It could have simply been fun watching Charlie Chaplin fall over, or Harold Lloyd comically hold onto on a swinging loose pillar hundreds of feet in the air. 

Cousin talk about a projector whirring, the magic beam of light and there on the white sheet draped over window pelmet, the mad cap antics of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Llyod, Buster Keaton.  No doubt others forgotten.  The laughter and the echoing down the years sound of frantic movie piano, a signal to the expected emotions of danger and relief from, for our white sheet comedy heroes.

I listened and loved the nostalgic feeling in the talk.  I listened and of course remembered everything they were talking about.  I was there sitting by the projector with my dad.  Sometimes he even let me wind the film onto the projector.  The memory was embedded in my cortex.  The alcove where the old-fashioned monster radio sat.  My mum back and forth with food and juice, and then disappearing to her own space.  For this was a boys night in.  I didn’t understand why and any future thoughts of ‘mum would have loved this as well’ were for the future, and the thoughts of the man not the boy.  Then again other thoughts running parallel to that—maybe mum was glad to have a space to herself, maybe she wouldn’t have loved the films, and the noise. Peace perfect peace.  I try to balance the two opposing thoughts and realise of course they are mine. I have no idea what my mum thought. 

My dad’s funeral was a day of saying goodbye, of numbness, of saying hello to relatives not seen since the last funeral. Of shaking the condolences hands, many from people I did not know, or not well, but were the characters in my dad’s life story. 

Late afternoon on that day and another boy’s gathering.  Only this time the boys were all middle-aged men loosening black ties, and suit jackets over back of chairs.  My cousins and me lager, or heavy, or bitter, whatever the personal choice, and a toast in memory of my dad.  The women were in the living room on the comfy chairs.  We were in the dining room on chairs that after a while, and despite the drink, the hard back wood of the chair not the best companion for middle aged bones.

As said the conversation turned to the film nights.  Conversation that flowed with the beer and emotions of the day.

‘I remember those films.’ I said.

‘You can’t have.’ One of my cousins replied.

I insisted and the cousins insisted that I couldn’t have.  They were all ten years or more older than me.  They were all primary age during the film nights.  I wasn’t even born when the film nights happened. Not even a twinkle in my daddy’s eye!

I felt so strongly, and part of still feels, I was there. I have pictures of silent movies, of   laughter and food and juice. Of my dad concentrating and so carefully winding the magic film through the projector.

That was a longer story/reminisce than I meant when I started.  When writing it other details popped into my head and made it onto the page. 

Once the memory tap is turned on it’s like a river that needs to be fed with tributaries all along the way and from another source altogether.  Thing is once they flow into the river they are as the one river, one source.

So am I saying the above is part fiction.  There are undeniable facts there. My father did die and there was a funeral, and my cousins were there. We did talk as a group after. Was the part about the lager and beers true or partially true? Was there coffee and tea involved or does it matter?

Is there a storytelling element about the details relayed?  Does alcohol facilitate talk better than tea or coffee?  Even at funeral where emotions are raw.  The truth is I don’t truly remember.  I also don’t remember ninety nine percent of what we talked about, or for how long.

So, memory is partial and selective like fiction?

 Including the part about the dialogue between me and my cousins. Is that what they said?  I wrote the above in a flow as if the tap was turned on my memory and out it came.  It is over thirty years since then.  Had the memory been enhanced by other folks’ reminiscences since, or by the natural human facility for narrative?

Does it matter if the destination of the feeling truth is reached via the winding path of storytelling?  There is an emotional truth there that outweighs the facts.  I must have heard other folk’s memories of events and places and people from before I was born.  Why did that one stick?  Or are they all in their swimming in my sub-conscious battling to get to the shore first?

Was I jealous I wasn’t there?  Did the cinema scope setting make it visual enough and imaginatively fluid enough for me to insert myself into the scene?

This is what I wonder about.  If peeling back the layers of happenings ever gets you to the core, or the very action of peeling back builds another layer.

This intrigues me. 

Its important I feel to be intrigued.  Intrigued leads to questions which like the analogy about peeling back layers leads mainly to other questions rather than answers.

This is good.  I feel okay with that.  Answers stop you in your tracks.  Why should there be answers? A bit like the destination never living up to the anticipation built during the journey, answers like the reveal of the mystery, the whodunnit, or the movie monster glimpsed, are always less than what is felt and imagined.  Is that because the so-called answer is always false in the deeper sense.

I’ve never been bothered that much about the endings of stories. A lot of people seem to upset if answers are not forthcoming.  As if a contract has been broken. 

Our lives are uncertain!  We have bought tickets to this show to be told the answer especially if it reinforces what we already believe. 

I never care much for all the knots to be unravelled and laid out Poiret style.  I love Agatha Christie, both the books and films, but couldn’t tell you half the time, even after watching them numerous times, who the murderer was, or what motivated them to do it.  It was always the narrative and interactions of the family and friends, or detective and sidekick, that kept me watching.  It was their motives which interested me the most. Motives that were fluid like I feel most motives are, and feelings depending on the moment. 

It is human I suppose to try, and grab hold of something solid while drifting in the sea of doubt.  Doubt though is the journey and the catalyst for emotion and action in many narratives.  Even in the most self-confident of characters there must be the niggling doubt of why the world doesn’t always pay heed to this confidence and structure itself around that character’s needs.

So, what is the purpose of memories?

Do they help us on our forward journey in life? Or are they a wave that constantly beats us back to the path? A case of one step forward and two steps back. 

What would happen if the voices inside our head ‘remember what happened the last time now!’ ‘Think before you leap.’  ‘Your mother is not going to be pleased.’  ‘I know every word of this song.’  ‘This beach seemed so much bigger when I was little.’

No doubt pros and cons from having memories of a particular time and place.  They can stop you or make you hesitate with second thoughts from stepping off an emotional cliff side again!  They can also stop you appreciating a beach as it is, rather than it never was.

So much literature is about the past.  Or how the past informs the present. 

Is it not though that the present informs the past?

Scenario: briefly revisiting the memory of dad and the film nights.  You can’t say that is the past informing the present because it didn’t happen. Or at least to me.  So the present, and by that I mean the constant present, from when I was growing up to sitting around that table after my father’s funeral.  My emotional need or thoughts at the time in the present drew on that ‘memory’ not to remember but to salve the present. I created a past in the present which served the present.

Onward to considering if we had no emotional memory at all.  If it was only functional in that we could remember who people where, and how things worked but emotionally where completely in the present.

What would that mean?   Would we actually live instead off remembering how we never actually lived?  Also since memory is selective what is the point of it anyway?  If we need a warm or chilly emotional coat for the present winter moment couldn’t we file them away and plug them in according to category?

Childhood memory!

Rough and tumble of high school.

First job.

First love.

It is in the major moments in life, love, birth, and death that the memory is strongest.  Those moments we step out of the everyday with the feeling of existing for a time in an alternative universe.  Folk around seem different, both in finer focus and further away.  And they treat your differently from the ordinary day.

Bereavement brings lower register voice, the reluctance to impose on you.  In these moments when time seems to pause the memory file can come into play and function as a way forward out of the pause.  Life resumes, the file is closed till the next critical moment and life is lived in the moment.

My science fiction mind coming to the fore here but is science fiction the projection of the present into the future?  So they say but maybe that’s for another essay.

The beach, the sea, the sky as if seen for the first time.  Describing what you see and feel at that moment rather than an amalgam of different memories, opinions yours and others, and the all the baggage of a life lived until then.  Many a time I’ve taken the dog for a walk along familiar streets, and it is as if my brain tells my feet which way to turn, but my senses are on mute.  I have literally been down that road before so many times.

So, let’s presume every time I walk down that road, I archived that memory only to be accessed in times of high emotional need.  Then each walk can be felt anew. 

Would we still be human? 

I feel a play taking shape!  Need to write it now before the memory of the though is archived!