Memory Tracings
A year or so ago, some friends of mine from high school posted a photo of us—just the three of us standing there in what I recognized as one of their living rooms. I had no memory of the moment. It felt eerie. I suppose it felt that way because the usual way of things with photographs is that, looking at the snapshot throughout the years, we tend to remember the moments. In this case, in the intervening 30 years, I had forgotten the moment altogether.
Then there are other moments—snapshots in my mind—that linger without a hard-copy. I had a brief friendship with a guy in college, just during our first semester. We took turns reading a copy of the book, “It” that we had borrowed from another, long forgotten friend. My last memory of Nick was briefly visiting with him sometime in the second semester that year. We had since both moved out of the dorm we were in, he into a little apartment near campus. As we visited there that last time, we played with his pit bull puppy and he told me how he was dropping out of school to join the marines.
For some reason I always remembered that moment, but never could place where it had happened. Outside of that one conversation, I never went to those apartments again in the following three years I was at school. I began to wonder if I had invented aspects of the memory.
Then, tonight I drove through that town again, driving to pick my daughter up from her new dorm. And, I drove right past those apartments once more, largely unchanged in the 25 intervening years.
How is it I can find a memory on the one spot in geography, but not the moment frozen as it was in time? The mysteries of memory fascinate me.
Then there are other moments—snapshots in my mind—that linger without a hard-copy. I had a brief friendship with a guy in college, just during our first semester. We took turns reading a copy of the book, “It” that we had borrowed from another, long forgotten friend. My last memory of Nick was briefly visiting with him sometime in the second semester that year. We had since both moved out of the dorm we were in, he into a little apartment near campus. As we visited there that last time, we played with his pit bull puppy and he told me how he was dropping out of school to join the marines.
For some reason I always remembered that moment, but never could place where it had happened. Outside of that one conversation, I never went to those apartments again in the following three years I was at school. I began to wonder if I had invented aspects of the memory.
Then, tonight I drove through that town again, driving to pick my daughter up from her new dorm. And, I drove right past those apartments once more, largely unchanged in the 25 intervening years.
How is it I can find a memory on the one spot in geography, but not the moment frozen as it was in time? The mysteries of memory fascinate me.
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