Memories
I’m a memorable person.
More accurately, I’m a rememberer. I remember things.
This is why people think I’m smart. I’m not that smart.
I’m just good at remembering, and I love to remember. I’ve been defined as a visual-learner, with a close-to-photographic memory, so people naturally assume that I simply remember the optics of a situation. In reality, I remember emotions. I remember feelings. I remember aches.
Aches is the closest word I can come up with. Some would use nostalgia; C.S. Lewis would call it sensucht. It’s something that pulls you away from the present moment into a timeless point in which you can almost grasp it before ‘poof!’ it’s gone. What I’m trying to say is that it’s not a bad thing. Just…a thing.
Being an ‘achey’ person, I have a hard time communicating this to people. They generally assume I’m not happy because I miss something from years ago. But that is not the case; I’m still happy – just achey that day.
It’s important to remember. (I think I’m being objective about this, and not just placating my own freakish nature.) Remembering is the filter with which we process everything coming at us today.
The trick is using the right filter.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
WK
April 20, 2008 at 2:37 am
I am throughly disgusted with this post. What kind of person writes what you just wrote. I mean it might seem ok to you on paper but frankly I am appalled… “stick that in your pipe and smoke it” just rude…
ah badly placed jokes… I love them.
April 21, 2008 at 12:42 am
I’m sorry, Pat. You’re just going to have to deal with how I write. I’M REAL, MAN. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?
April 30, 2008 at 12:14 pm
If you remember things well, I think the lesser-used word to describe that is “memorious”.
I recall I used to be able to nearly fathom the concept of infinity before it slipped out of my mental grasp like a writhing fish. That sort of thing doesn’t happen as often since my mind became cluttered with “adult” things.
JM
April 30, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I am laboriously memorious.
Jared, I hear you on the fathoming infinity. In the Gospels, as you know, Jesus said we needed faith like a child. There are many ways to interpret that, but the Christian Culture Answer may have a little truth in it, despite its tendency toward clichédness.
May 5, 2008 at 5:57 pm
It’s true. Even in Zen practice, they talk about having a “beginner’s mind” which (imo) is basically exactly what Jesus was talking about. Spiritual growth requires a constant renewal, a return to the basics, to near-emptiness. As Yoda says “You must unlearn what you have learned.” And as Jackie Chan says in that Forbidden Kingdom movie “How can your cup be filled if it is full already?”
I’ve always sort of felt that you and I are like two sides of the same coin, working towards the same goal from different directions. Maybe I’m flattering myself. Ha.
May 6, 2008 at 4:35 pm
That could very well be, Jared. I think we’re both looking for meaning and reason, just in different roads and journeys.