Meadowdale H.S. graduation 2012
Middletown H.S. graduation 2012
Dunbar H.S. graduation 2012
Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2010 > June > 05 > Entry
What do you remember?
I’m reading Hitch-22, the new memoir by Christopher Hitchens. I’m about 75% finished with the book.
Hitchens is a Brit who became a US citizen a few years ago. He’s a bit of a political gadfly. His viewpoints are often unpredictable. This memoir is quite entertaining.
He makes some amazing admissions. For example, Hitchens reveals that he is essentially bisexual but that he has been primarily heterosexual since he has gotten older and lost his good looks to the point that men are not attracted to him in the way they might once have been.
While he makes these candid admissions he also makes some stunning omissions as well. I just read the section where he describes how he became a US citizen in 2006. The ceremony was arranged by his pal, the head of the Dept. of Homeland Security. In passing Hitchens mentions the name of his wife. This was the first indication that the reader has that he is even married. There’s been no courtship. No wedding described. Apparently, there are children, too! Bizarre. Perhaps he is telling his story out of sequence and he’ll get to the part about his wife, later?
This got me thinking. I imagine that you could have 100 people experience the same incident together and every single person would remember different aspects of the thing that occurred.
What is the nature of memory? How do we select our memories? This Hitchens memoir reminded me of a memory. Some years ago my neighbor died. She was an elderly widow. She and her late husband had built their house in the mid 1950’s. It was filled with all the things they had accumulated over a half century.
Her only survivor was an elderly sister who lived far away. Her sister was in her mid eighties and handling the estate was quite complicated. We were helping her out and after some discussion we offered to buy the house and whatever contents the sister decided to leave there.
So we did. The house was filled with our neighbor’s furniture, clothing, books, household supplies, you name it. It was a fascinating project to go through all this stuff.
Our neighbor had been a meticulous person. Almost everything in the house had some sort of a record that went along with it. In her closets all her dresses had index cards which enumerated every date when a particular outfit had been worn, the occasion, the people involved, etc.
There were cards in every book that provided dates the books were read, re-read, and any thoughts she had about the books. There was also extensive marginalia in every book. She had an incredible library. Things like first editions of Mark Twain.
There were household products in bright containers. Many were obsolete brands. It seemed that they had rarely discarded anything.
The most fascinating reading turned out to be her daily diary, a memoir of sorts. In it she recorded all the mundane details of her daily existence. When she awakened. What time she opened the drapes. What sorts of birds had come to her feeders. Which annoying neighbor cats (mine) were lurking about.
She described every meal she ate in detail and when she consumed the leftovers that was also noted. Her correspondence. Her phone calls. Her visitors. All there. Dates. Times.
What do we remember? And why? What is important to recall?
Was my neighbor an excessive diarist? Or did this attention to detail allow her to keep her mind sharp? To stay moored to daily life? She was elderly. Living alone. Afraid.
I had not thought about her until I began reading the Hitchens book.
Then I remembered….
Vick Mickunas
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: clearing the cobwebs
Comments
By Insider
June 6, 2010 2:14 PM | Link to this
“k” (sorry, I forgot)
By Insider
June 6, 2010 12:22 PM | Link to this
If you want to extensively probe mysteries of the mind, here is a title: “Phantoms In The Brain” Foreword by Oliver Sacks, M.D. written by V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., PH.D., and Sandra Blakeslee. It does discusses more than ‘memory’ and it’s worth reading. I especially liked “The Secret Life of James Thurber” chapter. There are aspects of ‘memory’ that most of us never consider. Neuroscience may be better at answering your question, Vic. Otherwise, it’s all “opinion.”
By Max
June 6, 2010 9:53 AM | Link to this
“I imagine that you could have 100 people experience the same incident together and every single person would remember different aspects of the thing that occurred.” Yet, none would have the final say of what ‘actually’ happened. Criminal trials always demonstrate this phenomena that eyewitness tesimony is the least reliable…..I think the same could be said about our memories which are different brain functions. Thinking about the past from the present day context often results in ‘creative perspectives.’ And, there’s the aspect that the older we get the more we have to recall which shapes those memories even more. Hence, we recall the ‘good ole days’ or ‘simpler times’ when in fact, taken in totality, they weren’t as ‘good’ or ‘simple’ as we’d like to believe. The 60’s are often looked upon with a cultural fondness; the Moon landing, Woodstock, panty hose, ‘free love,’ birth control, etc. But, the music was basically 3-minute nursery rhymes, Vietnam was destroying a generation, the race riots in Watts, Detroit, and Newark, the Chicago Democrat Convention, the assassinations of the Kennedy’s, Malcom X, MLK,….well, I wouldn’t want to live through it again.
By On Record...
June 6, 2010 12:06 AM | Link to this
I’ve just been contacted by my Vietnam War “Band of Brothers.” It came 35 years and two months after Vietnam collapsed. As I fought to stay alive in Vietnam as an 18 year old, and became an old man at age 21 due to Vietnam, I used the same mental capacities I developed to deny what I experienced becoming an old man…to continue my life as mentally unscathed as possible. This changed as I was contacted by one, then another, and another, of my survivor brothers. Details of our experience came flooding back. I recalled details that amazed them, and me. Some became quiet and started to weep/cry. One won’t speak to me. You ask: “Why do we remember? And why? What is important to recall?” In these last years of my life , I know that truth has previously been denied. In my case, it has set me free to forgive myself.
By ssbn
June 5, 2010 9:29 PM | Link to this
Memory can be both good and bad. When one remembers certain specific historical occurrences, there are those that would prefer that you would forget and not mention the occurrence again. This is especially true with our govt. and society. (they prefer that some of history is forgotten or, twisted) Childhood memories are interesting. For me, remembering the first Super Bowl. Or, when JFK was assassinated. Perhaps, vacation memories. Or school memories. I have learned that life is like driving a car. Sometimes, you look at the past. (like looking through the rear view mirror) You may cringe at the bad memories. And, you may smile at the good memories. Fortunately, we tend to remember more of the good times.
By Insider
June 5, 2010 5:13 PM | Link to this
I had terrible insomnia as a child and couldn’t sleep unless I was completely covered up. And I took things quite literally. Once some boys walking past our house asked me if I was sweeping the walkway for my “old man” and I ran crying into the house and asked if daddy were ‘old’ because I thought it meant he would die. It took me a very, very long time to figure out that people don’t necessarily mean ‘exactly’ what they say.
By lmj
June 5, 2010 4:04 PM | Link to this
I’ve found it interesting that my husband’s and my memories of the birth of our son, 20-1/2 years ago, are so different. He always sticks to his version and I stick to mine.
By Insider
June 5, 2010 3:07 PM | Link to this
We bought our neighbor’s house,too—my favorite house ever! It had a fully functional ‘player’ piano; wonderful hardwood floors that shone like blocks of honey and some lovely very dark mahogany furniture. There were also bundles of personal letters and stacks of old sheet music in a trunk in the attic. I was very young, but I also remember many jars of delicious grape jam and jelly on shelves in the basement that she had canned from the grape arbor in the yard. We enjoyed those preserves for a long time although we did move (for some odd reason) within just a few years.