 Poetry: October 27, 2021 Issue [#11051] |
This week: In the Midst of the Forgotten Edited by: Fyn  
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Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.~~ George Eliot
So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories. ~~John Williams
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten. ~~Marie Antoinette
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.~~ Steven Spielberg
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Moments brought forth into the now. Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve information. There are three major processes involved in memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. The how and why of memory have much to do with how and when we can bring that moment forward. Some memories are coded with our having to really 'think' about them. We all can identify the coins that make up our pocket change, yet give us a handful of foreign currency and we are at a loss. Why? Because this is either new or rarely used memory. Older adults don't have to 'think' about the time when we glance at an analog clock, we simply read it. But the younger generations, more of the digital generation, look at their phones, rather than a handy clock on a wall because they will have to interpret hours, minutes, and a minute or hour hand to gather that same information. My mother used to say she had an analog mind in a digital world - computers and chip-driven devices were beyond her ability or willingness to rethink common information.
When we retell that same old story for the umpteenth time, we usually tell it almost word for word as we did the previous ten times. We have memorized the memory, much like memorizing lines from a play. I can still spit out, "Whereat with blade, with bloody, blameful blade, we bravely broached their boiling, bloody, chests." (A Mid Summer Night's Dream) even though I was in the play twenty-five years ago. The majority of the lines I spoke are lost unless I reread the play and am reminded of same. Even then, pulling them back from memory' is not likely to happen.
Use it, or lose it is a phrase that applies here. I used to speak some Russian, some Danish, some French, and some Spanish. While I wasn't fluent in any of those languages, at one point in time, I could converse without thinking about it and then translating it into whichever language I was using. I no longer used the language, no longer needed it on a day-to-day basis and the words receded to some back corner of the twisty-turny little passages of my brain. Are you of a certain age to catch that little passage and remember what it is from?
One thing I have learned about writing is that a specific turn of phrase can trigger a memory. Not, perhaps, the full-blown memory, but just enough to think there's a poem in that somewhere. When I start to play with the phrase, turning it over in my head, a far-flung memory, something I haven't thought about in ages, will emerge and then the poem falls into place. The conscious thoughts unearth the long-buried memory and bring it forward into the now.
So too might a wisp of a song, a hint of a passers-by's perfume ora snippet of a conversation. Sometimes all it takes is something like this to remind us of a time from 'remember when' and then that sparks a whole new fire! It is kind of like those picture boards folks have at funerals. Personally, I am not a fan of them because I think that if you don't remember the person then there is no need to be there. But then again, for many those boards are the match that lights a memory. Me? When my time comes, no pictures, please. Instead, my kids know to scatter my words around for people to maybe read, rake home and have that piece of me.
Since we, as humans, tend to forget something like 75% of what goes on around us, being able to use our words can help us to keep in our living memory things, events, people, and moments that have had an impact upon us. We seem to live more and more in a transient age. I well remember back to the day in 1963 when President Kennedy died. That day is indelible. So too, September 11th. Much like December 7th was for my folks. Those days are like a series of photographic moments I can see in my mind's eye. I can remember entire conversations, talks on the phone, what I ate as well as how I felt. As those around us age and die, farther back bits of time and history can fade. Wars, the Holocaust, the rights and wrongs of either side in any confrontation, the whys and hows of what was important to whom. History must be written by the living and then not rewritten eons later. For better or worse, it must be as it was so that we will not live it again.
Writers, poets -- we are the ones to capture those moments, those verbal pictures.
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