Memorycemetery

I came across an article called “The culture of memory” a couple of weeks ago: http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.html   A quote from there:

 …Any earlier than about 3.5 years is, for most of us, a blank slate. We all have what Freud first called “childhood amnesia”–an inability to remember our earliest childhood. Ask a Maori New Zealander about his or her earliest memory, though, and you might find that the childhood amnesia ended a bit sooner. A Maori’s first memory might be of attending a relative’s funeral at 2.5 years old. A Korean adult, on the other hand, might not remember anything before age 4. Memory varies widely from person to person. Researchers have also found that the average age of first memories varies up to two years between different cultures. “We think that this is a function of the meaning of memory within a particular cultural system,” says Michelle Leichtman, PhD, a psychologist at the University of New Hampshire who studies childhood memory.  People who grow up in societies that focus on individual personal history, like the United States, or ones that focus on personal family history, like the Maori, will have different–and often earlier–childhood memories than people who grow up in cultures that, like many Asian cultures, value interdependence rather than personal autonomy…on average, Asian adults’ first memories were later than Caucasians’ (57 months as compared with 42 months). Maori adults’ memories reached even further back, to 32 months on average.

So, what would be my first memory? Here’s another one. I guess I was around four. I remember I was sick. My mother took me to hospital by sleds. I was completely covered in blankets and my head wrapped in my grandma’s shawl. On the way back from hospital my mother bought me a car to play with. I built for this car a track and ramp from my books. I was so excited playing with them I pissed in my knickers. I was afraid my mother would blame for this, so I went up to the radiator of central heating. It was mounted by the window, so I climbed on my little stool and pressed my knickers against it. It was in the winter, so the radiator was quite hot. I stood like this for a while, watching snow falling and people making their way on the icy pavements, and cars stuck in the snow… until my knickers got dry.

What I wanted to say, it took me about 20 minutes or so… watching snow. It was so beautiful to see its falling and everybody in the street didn’t seem to pay any attention to it… Reminding me somehow another thing, a February picture from 1988 wall calendar somebody gave to my parents; it’s theme was famous Dutch and Flemish painters. It was an excellent selection of 12 high quality prints, you’ll flip them over and there will be a picture related to this time of the year. February was “Hunters in the snow” by Pieter Brueghel, and I remember his father’s (pieter Bruegel the Older) ”Winter landscape with a bird trap” for December too. There were also Rubens, and Bosch… some minor names I don’t remember now…

Those “Hunters in the snow” really stuck in my mind.

     Hunters in the snow, by Pieter Bruegel, circa 1565

When I think about that episode with knickers I feel that I remember them walking there in that snow, which wasn’t possible: as the hunters in question are fictional and were painted over 400 years before I was born; and I actually saw this painting much later, maybe 8 or 9 years later from that moment I describe; so it’s really amazing when you think about it: an imaginary thread from the past cutting through present and into the future… All of these things totally overlapped! It’s like those hunters never stopped walking since they were painting, continue to do so even when I write, and will walk further long time after I would be dead, decomposed, long gone and forgotten. 

So there were 2 of us, witnessing this  hunters’ march through times: me and the calendar. The calendar was so great, actually, that it hang on our wall for the next 6 years or so. I wonder, what happened to it?

abraxus

P.S.  I just toyed around a bit with that new thing appeared on the site interface on the left- the author’s list…was actually surprised to see there my name between others … I wonder what happen to this box if all 6 bln. people+ will post their memories! Scrolling it down probably would be like climbing Everest… Anyway, what I was about to say is, unfortunately this thing displays posts only, not comments…and you can’t see comments in search too :(. Nevermind.  So, I decided to reprint my last comment to goofyfish post as post in its own right, as long as it includes my memory too. And, of course, it expanded a bit from that.  I know, I already have a post about the first memory, but still… That is one of my earliest memories too. I like childhood memories though, they are kind of innocent…

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