No, this isn’t a post about where I was 10 years ago today because there just isn’t anything notable or extraordinary about watching the news in a giftbook publisher/photo album designer’s breakroom.
Pretty much everyone who had consciousness remembers where they were 10 years ago today, of course. But it makes me sad to realise just how many people don’t recall other moments of their lives that were JUST as formative in their world as 9/11/01 was to the world in general.
That’s exactly why I’m thankful for Facebook. I realise that it’s customary and somewhat de rigeur in certain circles to deride Facebook as useless or a waste of time, and like anything else it can be bad for you if you overindulge. But I’ve reconnected with so many people who have been very important to me over the years and we’ve used Facebook to share those vital memories, fill in the gaps in others recollection and, in some cases, heal old wounds. It’s a way to reach not only across distance but across time and that is a remarkable gift. 
In talking about those old memories with friends it is both a lot neat and a little creepy to see how they viewed things that loomed large in my world, small in theirs. We had an English teacher our senior year who changed the world for me. He was the first person to actively appreciate my creative writing* and became my friend. He visited me at my job selling ice cream cones at the mall and talked about his upcoming marriage and my upcoming college sojourn. We were both on the cusp of something larger and it was good to talk it out with a like-minded person, another writer. Of course nobody else in my senior class seemed to remember him at all. To them he was just the guy in the bow-ties who took over when Miss Stouffer left.
Before I became ill I had an eidetic memory. Now I have what they tell me is a “normal” memory, and while it is restful at times it is also sad. Not unlike losing old photo albums to flood and fire. Of course I think having good memory skills is a boon to being a writer, and I’m always curious about how other writers perceive their ability to remember.
I wish I remembered to think of a clever conclusion to this post, so that it could end well and truly and leave something edifying in its wake. As it is I suppose now I just have to trail off and sign off and go make things that I’ll remember tomorrow.
(*outside of my parents who were just thrilled with the “books” I wrote them as a 4 year old.)
I’ve been thinking about this post all day, Wondering what that transition must have been like for you with your memory. Like losing the springy physicality for youth and one day realizing you can unbend from sitting cross legged on the floor? More gradual or something that hit that just noticeable difference and you realized something had changed?
I am curious, I think, because I have a terrible memory. For me some of it if from pain and trauma I’ve suffered over the years. I’m seeing studies lately correlating stress hormones and memory and it seems suddenly obvious to me. On the plus side I can often read a book a second time and it’s like reading a whole new book. Or people will tell stories that feature me and it’s fascinating, lie discovering something new about myself, while seeing it through someone else’s eyes It also means I write a lot things down, even if I never look at the note again, someone using my hand to transcribe it sticks it in my brain. Otherwise there’s a good chance it’s going for good. I keep a fairly detailed journal on my thoughts about my life and emotional responses to things, lest those ideas and feelings be lost days later.
I know having a memory (a good memory?) is essential all all, but I have to think of something I recently read by Montaigne about memory (someone who seemed to be perfectly happy with having a lousy one): Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Wondering what that transition must have been like for you with your memory.
Huh. Good question, as it forces me to think through the timeline and get focus on the situation.
For the first six months after the surgery that kick-started my disease process, I had very little focus at all. I was in a fog, tired all the time and in a great deal of inexplicable pain. It was not unlike having the flu for a hundred days, nonstop. I had to leave my very high-pressure job and spent a year yelling at strangers on the internet about politics. Misdirected anger.
Long story short, when the physical disease started to get managed I found myself realising things like no longer being able to recall conversations verbatim, no longer being able to recite the last page I’d read in whatever book I was reading. In many ways it was relaxing because having all those things at ready access is sort of like having someone always talking just over your shoulder. (Some doctors say that if I were to stop taking the Tramadol, which has a Seratonin component, I might regain some of that skill. But I’m not sure I want to. )
But in other ways it was hard at first. After about a year or so, though, I started working on Memory Palace* work more seriously and that makes it easier to recall things I need to recall and lock away things I’d rather forget or don’t need at the moment. So now I’m pretty much used to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci