wood park winter solstice

red oak london plane

catalpa sassafras

some things are worth remembering

Some things are worth remembering.
If you recognize a pattern you can predict the future.
Science measures to remember and compare
Testing outcomes against expectations.

Some things are best forgotten.
If you were to remember all the details
Of everything that happens in your life
You’d see too many trees but not the forest.

Some things are maybe imagined, maybe not.
If you remember later something you imagined
The memory can feel real, like being unsure
Did you only think of doing something or actually do it?

Memory is not just a time line into the past.
It is a timeless structure with unlimited rooms
Each room holding fragments of information
And ideas and imaginary constructs.

The use of memory is not just to retrieve information.
You can go there and wander from room to room
Thinking, meditating, making new connections
Getting a new understanding, solving problems.

Some people can do that in their sleep.
Even if you don’t remember the details of your dreams
Surely you remember being there in that place
Moving from room to room among the fragments.

snow bird friends

album

another person's memories

Reading a book about another person’s memories

My own memories cross my mind as I read.

My thoughts wander off from the page

Until I come back and find my place to continue

Until the next page where the next memory surfaces.

The author is discussing how memory works

Using his own memories as his case in point.

The memories that occur to me as I read about his

Come forward again from a forgotten place

Into the present mingling my remembrance with his.

He talks about how we construct memory anew

Each time we recall the separate stored elements

From the different regions of the brain where bits and pieces

Sensations and emotions and meaning get placed

Re-assembled together somewhat the same.

These memories of mine are fragments of stories

Changed over time, changing subtly

Each time they are remembered, morphing

Like a myth told again and again.  No matter.

I enjoy my memories.  And I believe them.

When I remember something, I experience it.

It happens to me like a dream happens to me.

It does mean something, though you may ignore it.

We do have our history, it does influence us.

But our memories manifest who we are now.

It is possible to alter memory intentionally

Telling a story, showing images or multi media.

What we experience afterwards retroactively impacts

What we experienced before, creating a past

Like what I imagine from what my mother told me of her life.

And now there are research reports of epigenetic memory

That children and grandchildren can inherit

Fearfulness about a smell that scared their ancestors

Like there could in fact be a collective memory

Like we could somehow connect with the dead.

Today as I sit here housebound in the December cold

The snow swirls outside and collects hour by hour.

Watching the flakes fall and float, my mind wanders

Seeing the same winter weather happen, hearing the same hush

Feeling a memory from long ago.