in memory of memory

i sat in my swing in some late- autumn sunshine, watching the rays catch a column of tiny flies -- large colonies fly intricate patterns with no clear order, never brushing each other, like a huge flock of snow geese turning in the sky. not for the first time i wonder about them. what kind of insects are they? why do they occupy the same geography of the air for hours at a time, going up, or down, or in a circle? (it might be simplest to assume their zen nature, but then everything has zen nature.)

how will i find this information? i will probably phone the insect department at uc berkeley and ask. it's the kind of thing that i think i need more information than i have even to google. then it hits me like a bolt from the blue: even if i find the right person and ask the right question, i will not remember the answer. i've proved this to myself over and over. for one, there is a reedy kind of plant in my pond and i can never remember its name! i have looked this up dozens of times, and am today still unsure. or like spelling. if one is referring to other human beings, or rather the lack of them, are there two o's in the common word for that? again, i've looked it up. many times. i just say 'nobody' instead.

there have always been things i can and cannot remember. i can remember phone numbers for many decades, but that's because, as a synaesthete, i remember their colors. i have never remembered names, even when trying those 'cute' memory prompts. and as is not unusual amongst aspergergians, i feel an almost undeniable urge to nickname everybody. the length of time someone's real name lasts in my memory is about one minute. i'm not bragging, nor am i complaining. i accept that this is how i am.

more disconcerting are the actual changes. now, to give you some examples of the memory that was: in my early 20s i worked for a few months in a real estate office answering the phone. there were maybe fifteen agents with as many phone lines and i could easily, always, remember who was on which line and who it was for. no notes. a decade later as i became editor, publisher, designeer and everything else of a literary magazine. i kept many tiny items in my mind at a time and still could remember the addresses of my subscribers.

i still fool myself, saying, 'ok i don't need to write it down -- i'll remember.' why do you think there are too-frequent omissions of artists' names? (there would be more, but for the hours spent retracing my steps, trying to find the missing info.) i know people who remember everything. every- thing. i remember small bits and pieces of events, conversations, but the vast majority of time is forever gone. i used to be better, though, it's clear. i assume it's age, but don't people say of children, 'he'd forget his head if it wasn't screwed on.' it could also be that much of my past is not worth remembering; i'll give you that with the acknowledgement that it's mind-fucking.

but the period of time that's missing grows larger and larger: in the last couple of years, i have shown up on the wrong day for doctor appoint- ments three times. i forget in their entirety phone conversations and one's in person as well. i lose the lists i make to help me remember. if i want to look something up online i have to remember to do so quite a number of times before i actually do it. i do look things up by the dozens most every day, so compared to much of the human race i am probably unusual.

did you wonder if this all bothers me? i nonchalantly throw caution to the winds, embarrassed occasionally, yes. but i forget that too. apparently the time one spends in the far reaches of the right brain gets deducted from the time in the left. i am consistently happier that any time i can remember, but then.... when i lose my way, i rest relieved in the fact that i will remember too little to be bothered in a day or two at the most. in the land of the imagination, in the land of awe and wonder, it's the present that is what counts, and none of this has hampered my ability to be there.

if i have a total lapse and post the same post more than once, something about which i worry, you will forgive me, won't you?

RATTY & HIS FRIENDS

'Ratty,' said the Mole suddenly, one bright summer morning, 'if you
please, I want to ask you a favour.'

The Rat was sitting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had just composed it himself, so he was very taken up with it, and would not pay proper attention to Mole or anything else.

Since early morning he had been swimming in the river, in company with his friends the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads suddenly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just under where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the surface again in a hurry, spluttering and angry and shaking their feathers at him, for it is impossible to say quite ALL you feel when your head is under water. At last they implored him to go away and attend to his own affairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song about them, which he called

'DUCKS' DITTY.'

All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

Ducks' tails, drakes' tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!

Slushy green undergrowth
Where the roach swim--
Here we keep our larder,
Cool and full and dim.

Everyone for what he likes!
WE like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!

High in the blue above
Swifts whirl and call--
WE are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!


'I don't know that I think so VERY much of that little song, Rat,' observed the Mole cautiously. He was no poet himself and didn't care who knew it; and he had a candid nature.

'Nor don't the ducks neither,' replied the Rat cheerfully. 'They say, "WHY can't fellows be allowed to do what they like WHEN they like and AS they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them? What NONSENSE it all is!" That's what the ducks say.'

'So it is, so it is,' said the Mole, with great heartiness.


from wind in the willows, written in 1908 by kenneth grahame. i got the text here but the whole book with some illustrations is here.