I have read somewhere a while ago about cells constituting a human body. Their life span lasts mostly from few seconds to months, depending on the kind. The longest ones live for around 7 years. It means that every 7 years we are completely regenerated: there is nothing left on physical plane from me living in 1999; not a single cell. I wonder how do we record our memories and how cells do pass recorded information from generation to generation… It looks like I already used to be 4 times, and about to finish my fifth cycle. Writing here is a sure way to back up myself in a case if something will go wrong, say, in a case of memory loss. So I decided to be honest, as ultimate memory loss anyway is just no more than 7 or 8 cycles away (keeping in mind what I’m a smoker, probably a half of that).
I spent most of my life trying to break out frames of convenience and certainty. My life was a constant escape. As I tried to live faster then my memories, I tried to run away from myself; cut off everything that hold ego together. To accept anything for given meant for me to accept self defeat. As I didn’t want to have compromises, I didn’t want to have anything in common with myself even a day ago. Head on I tried to hack into the future; no matter smash my head or break through I wanted to go as far as I could. I shed empty shells of my identity in process as a tree sheds leaves in the wind. Wind is a great allegory of time.
I didn’t see or rather didn’t care about danger of living like that then. Changing lives, names, places, occupations, friends, interests… you name it.
I lost myself. I don’t know anymore who I am, or who I was meant to be. It’s like a simultaneous chess game. Once I had an experience of it, playing with a chess grandmaster. He played 30 games the same time; walking up and down the lane of chess tables. I was just a somebody behind one of the boards. Now imagine yourself in his place, with no opponents on another side. You play this game on 30 boards with yourself; and these are different games with different sets of rules, sometimes rules you are not aware of. Some of them I managed to finish, some barely started.
Continue reading ‘Stockholm syndrome’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
Baby’s First Memory? Clambering into her slatted Junior Bed (a step up from the Crib in sophisticated styling) and sucking on a sugar cube (one of two), a customary treat courtesy of staff at The Torch of Acropolis, a Greek restaurant her parents frequented.
But when – and how? – did she assign the designation First Memory to a mental event, an association of sugar cube and Junior Bed? She was four years old, perhaps, or five (no more) when the scene reconstituted itself unbidden on her mental stage with such force that she said to herself, “That is My Earliest Memory,” then wondered, “Did I know how to talk then?” and asked herself, “Where has that Memory lived until now?” (She was a precocious and introspective child, inclined to converse with herself.)
Then she considered how it came to pass that she recalled the source of the sugar cube – The Torch of Acropolis, its waiters. Surely her memory of The Torch sprang from a later time – or might it have been an earlier?
And so she formed the habit of lying awake at night and contemplating the past.
(Cross-posted at Remembery)
Sheila Ryan
Other posts by Sheila Ryan
Memory ….is such a fragile thing…Longer we have come to the present moment, thinner the line of the memory became….then I am not even sure if it happened in reality, or just i was dreaming about it…or my brain has manipulated me conveniently…
my first memory….is just sounds and pictures….i can see only the old wooden framed window. and there is the noise that old window makes. I guess it was in winter. there are some traces of snow on the window. then cracks and sounds.
this is the earliest memory I could remember. I guess I was not even 2 years old since my parents moved to newly renovated house by the time I reached three years old.
But is it true that i was living in such a place???…not sure anymore….or do i really have this memory?…Or my mother talked about it and my brain took as my memory???? dont know….
5th year of me staying in London, my father finally decided to visit me there. Then one of the sightseeing days, I took him to the British Museum which was refurbished recently at that time. As soon as he entered the library which was designed in a circle with full of collective valuable books, he said in amazement.
“This is the place I dreamt when I was a boy! This is the place!.I was only 6 years old when I had this dream. But I still remember, and time to time I was thinking where it could be! This is the place. and This is the reason. ”
It cant be just the manipulated memory since the plan of the library was not even planned when he was young. And the layout of the library is not the usual one.
Since that day every morning (till him leaving London), he walked from the hotel at Baker street to the British Museum. (if you know the map of London, its not a short walk, not even pleasant!!)…I wonder what he has been thinking about with these walks…
Is there any strong connection between my father and the library? I wonder if it was just a key for him to trace back to his memory as a boy???
Mayuko
Other posts by mayuko
When the Emperor Charlemagne came into the country of the East Saxons and asked them whom they worshipped they replied, “Krodo is our god;” to which the Emperor replied “Krodo is all the same as Kroten-duvel!” “And he made them pay bitterly by the sword and the rope for the crime of calling God, according to their language, by a name different from that which he used; for he put many thousands of them to death, like King Olof of Norway, to show that his faith was one of meekness and mercy.
A friend of mine just came from Cambodia, he was talking in great lengths about fields of death there, heritage of khmer rouges, or Red Khmers. In a span of 20 years something like a quarter of population was wiped out. A field of death is a grave, there hundreds or thousands of people sometimes put together, by hands or with a help of bulldozer. It reminded me unexpectedly a movie I saw recently, Get Smart, in which Maxwell Smart, who is a secret agent for the US agency called CONTROL (whose nemesis organization is called KAOS - which they say like the word ‘chaos’), says: “We have to shoot and kill and destroy. We represent everything good and wholesome in the world.”
History repeats itself, otherwise it wouldn’t be called history. Continue reading ‘History repeats itself; memory never does’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
