Last year, for my birthday, my wife gave me a copy of “”I remember“Unusual notes by the artist Joe Brenard. It is a small book, less than two hundred pages, made entirely of short paragraphs, often one starts with words “remember”. Read some of them and you will receive the idea immediately:
Memories are not in any comprehensive arrangement, and they do not tell a story, in this way. But they add up to a picture of the child’s childhood, an American person, young people in the ninety years of age, and the fifties of the fifties, and they fly what is similar to growth in general. “I remember” does not focus on the incidents that adults find attention in the past. It classifies random impressions (“I remember once when it rains on one side of our fence but not on the other hand”), and coincidence and appearances (“I remember very thin belts”), and the social and technological reality boats presented simply, as a child testing them (“I remember DDT”). Notes do not slide any rabbit holes. Wipe through memory. It is also honest and not fatal. (“I remember that I feel sorry for children in the church, or school, who have ugly mothers.”) I remember “a book that is easy to read, but it was difficult to write.
The book looks particularly magic because it seems unwanted. Our memories are the homes of the treasure that we struggle to open; Self -awareness, forgetfulness and control prevents the door. Brenard seems to have wandered. In one word to “I remember”, his poet Ron Badgate recalls how their circle’s reaction to the book was: “Everyone saw that he had discovered a wonderful discovery, and many of us asked about the reason not to think about such a clear idea of ourselves.” Writing memoranda can be bleak, frightening and important; Why not only remember?
Since I read “I remember”, I have been following the Brainardian approach in a file on my computer. It was inspired by TERSE, concrete lines from Gertrude Stein and printing Andy Warhol. (Fortunately, my colleague David S. Wallace published appreciation From Brainard as a poet, painter, and cartoonist a few weeks ago). My ambitions are simpler: I was satisfied with remembering the blue and blue sandals that my mother bought for me when I was in kindergarten, which I found it unofficial; Katie, the girl in the seventh grade who assumed people to crush because both of them talked a lot; And the time I feared from a total scene in a science fiction movie to the point that my father was directed by me. I am not Joe Brenard – my memories will carry you, so I will not continue to include it. But they do not bear me.
Like many people, I find that memory leads to memory. We can remember a lot, if we give ourselves the time and space to try. Most of the time, we sweep shortly below the memory lane. This is like walking a few buildings from your apartment; Because you start in the same place every time, you see the same sites over and over again. We may reconsider the scenes most related to the life, or the most remembrance of our lives and we live them now. But if you wander a little, you discover a rewarding memories that lack clear importance. Is it important that your first watch is Casio F-91W- It is a saturated square bond with a small metal studs of the buttons? You used to be afraid of the waves on the beach? That paint in your elementary schools is sweet?
It does not matter, however, these memories can expand your past. You can increase your sense of time expansion, and reminds you of the amount you saw and did, for the time you lived, and from the place you were and who you were. Thus, it is strange that random memories can become related to the edition of you that creates it. The more you remember, the more you feel deeply.
It is amazing, given the number of years behind us, we do not spend more time remembering them. But the demands today keep us Besieged In the present prison. Who has time to drown in the past? There is a little Catch-22 here. It may be useful to remember more of your life, but it takes some time; If you don’t have time, you do not face bonuses, and thus become less likely to set the priorities for stimulating your past. In the third volume of “”Struggle“The novelist Karl of Knosjard He records his little memories of early childhood-a remembrance, brother, mom, and father, and some images derived from photographs-and concluded that “this condition that resembles ghetto from its incompleteness is what I call my childhood.” There can be decreased returns to spend time in such a place.
Of course, in writing “My Struggle”, Knausgaard remembered enough of his life to fill six volumes of automatic automatic. How did that do that? “I have developed a way, present at the present time, sitting here, drinking some coffee, thinking about memory,” He told meAfter the final folder was published in English. “I just like to start writing, then remember something, then write about it, then remember something else.” “Because moments may not always be important moments, but the moments that occur next to that task can be. There is freedom to do so.” Freeing from the ability to predict, supposed, and from familiarity – but also freedom from the restrictions imposed by who we are today.
Few of us write notes. But we can still decide to make remembering part of our lives. A structure, system, or set of procedures helps, but it should not feel like a job; It can be enjoyable, improvisation, a different form of vigilance, alternative to your phone. The sermon of memory is everywhere, and it is wonderfully randomly: If the “Shady Lane” song comes on the radio, you may remember when I heard for the first time. After that, with a little sick effort, you may see your girlfriend put “tilted and charming” on the surface of the tape of her car, which contained a blue vinyl bracelet, and preserved silver aluminum with rounded ends to roll the windows up and down. If you are lucky enough to have old photographs, you can a gun through them, and restore the full holiday memories that you forgot. You can put an old address in Google Street View, then move around the neighborhood until memories flow. There is an interesting rhythm of memory and imagination that you can settle. Some memories may be more stable than others. You can use your less reliable memories as Gossamer to connect the proportional certainty.
These islands are present, even in your far past. In the seventies of the last century, a psychologist named Harry Baherrick conducted studies on long -term memory. It was found that the people who presented with their annual books in old high school could reliably remember the names of the people who saw the last time three decades ago. Related research has shown that people can remember the words of the vocabulary acquired in the Spanish chapter many years ago. The memory fades, but not uniform. There are anchor points. If you can tie yourself with one you know, or find a new one, you can sometimes climb to non -available places.
Sometimes memories come to us. A few years ago, one of her acquaintances told me that she was in the midst of “removal of allergies and re-processing”, or EMDR-a treatment you think about shocking events in your past while moving your eyes in ways that are supposed to make memories less powerful. (Treatment is some ambiguity: there is no good explanation for the reason for his work, but “”Conductly recommended“Through the American Association of Psychiatric Medicine for the Treatment of PTSD because some people find it very useful.) We did not get into the reason for its EMDR; instead, we talked about how, as a secondary product for treatment, I found that the treatment suddenly had been immersed in the newly available memories. I now recalled scenes of her childhood.
I have no plans to try EMDR, or to write six volumes of automatic strife. But I spend some time every week organizing the basement – usually in the morning, before children woke up – and I discovered that memories come there. When looking at books shelves, open property boxes that have not been touched for years, sometimes I am lost in remembering. I used to think about this as stall. Now I try to see it as a worthy goal, along with clearing from old things.
Days begin in our house about six. Pour the grains, make pies, lunch packages, and remove the garbage. Then the gym, work, phone calls, emails; Then dinner, a little playing time, some scroll, bathrooms, sleep stories, and bed. There is not much time to wander the mind. It is difficult to be in the past, or even nowadays, when the next minute is always here. The time slides away. This is another reason to spend more of it in remembering. Many are lost, but perhaps less than you think. ♦
