Excerpt from my novel-in-progress: A Theory of Darkness
(An excerpt from Fredrich Neilson’s journal)
01/09/20—
Now memory. According to Siny’s meticulous, though at times incomprehensible notes, memories are comparable to a mountain range. We remember certain things most vividly because these moments have impressed themselves upon our neurons and have physically changed the neuron’s structure. Siny writes about the “drama of the mind” and the superlative state. A striking passage in her notes: “I have been angry to the highest degree, I have felt my heart flutter to the highest degree, I have been saddest, most hopeful, most jealous – yes my life story is a story of mosts, of dramatic impressions, ordered in the most peculiar way.” What Siny explicates as an antithesis to the natural process of forgetting, is the spaced repetition of retrieving. If we feel the material is important enough for us to recall, our minds will proceed as such, thus ‘permanently’ etching it into our psyches. However, how accurate is memory and what do we remember, asks Siny in her notes. I am beginning to think that perhaps she was right — that if I remembered the story of my life it would come to me in pieces. We argued about this years ago. She was fixated on the notion of pieces and mental gaps. Then I scoffed at her, but now I see that perhaps a personal history is a selection of fragmented memories that are rearranged mentally. I never thought I would ever become so abstract. With my Theory of Everything I’d hoped for a concise explanation for universal existence, however now I revisit this initial goal to reflect upon and reconsider it. Siny has written that memory is an ever-changing puzzle and is a time in and of itself. Memory, she writes, is a constant process of editing. On page 144 of her manuscript, she writes: “I edit out all the long hours I have sat staring at the clouds and insert my most impressive moments, to call it my life. I must remember that I remember in pieces. So I will not tell my story as though it began at the beginning. There is no beginning when we remember. There is only the moment we re-member.”
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