Just To Say Hi (the mechanics of memory)

Hey Awesome Lady,

I'm at Pearl's, just wanted to say hi. Nothing special to report today, I didn't wind up going for a hike. Pearl's walker had a wheel that was coming loose, so I had to go over to Home Depot to get a replacement bolt. By the time I got it fixed, it precluded me going to Santa Clarita. I will still try for tomorrow, when Pearl has her crafts meeting. I hope you had a nice day. I will be back in an hour or so at the usual time.

I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

11:55pm : I'm back. Made a baked potato for a late night snack. I know you aren't posting as much since school ended, but I just wanted to say it's okay. I mean, you know me - I am always hoping for more communication, direct communication, but for whatever reason, if you can't, you can't. I, of course, post more when I have something to respond to. But anyway......

All I ask is that, if you ever get tired of doing this, or for any other reason don't feel like it, please let me know. That would be important for me to know, if it were the case. However, if your heart is in it, that's all I need to know, and I will write no matter what, even if you don't post much. Of course, as previously stated, the more you post, the more I post in response. And I still hope you will want/be able to communicate directly at some point, but the bottom line is that as long as your heart is in it, I will write. And, I love you no matter what. That part is permanent. :):)

When it's just me, I tend, as you know, to focus on my Weird Stuff, and tonight I was initially gonna write a bunch of stuff about memory, what it is, just kind of explore it, in relation to amnesia and recovered memories, and missing time, which I explored a couple weeks ago. I am more tired than I thought I'd be, and so not as focused, but I will at least try to begin my train of thought.

Tonight, I will not start at the beginning, because I was gonna start with an examination of "what is memory", and I am too tired to go into that. I will get to it perhaps tomorrow. What I will do tonight, is focus on a word I use to describe memories that I am certain are real, from events that really happened. That word is "visceral".

"Visceral" of course refers to viscera, meaning intestines, meaning "gut" feeling. I don't know the origin of the use of "visceral" in relation to emotions, or in my case, memories, but that is what I mean when I use the word. I mean that certain memories - from what happened in 1989 - still retain their visceral component.

Certain things, I can still remember, almost as if I am there now, even though it was over 25 years ago.

There's that Time Component again, and it factors in hugely in amnesia.

But that is how I began to piece together my missing time, through visceral memories.

I am interested in why we have memory in the first place, and that is what I really wanted to begin with tonight. Time and Memory.

Time and Memory : This evening, I read my book when I got home, then I went for part of my walk. That was over four hours ago now. Why do I know I did those two things? Because I remember it?

But what is "remember", anyway?

That question might seem inconsequential in ordinary matters, but what of a person who cannot remember something? A common example is Alzheimer's, or dementia. A less common example is amnesia. I have had amnesia in my life. For four years, from late 1989, to October 1993, I did not remember approximately 12 days of my life.

I've written all about the details previously, but now I am interested in the mechanics of memory.

And the first thing I always ask is : "What is memory, anyway". I mean, we know what it is.

But we think of it as sort of a "picture postcard" of something called "the past". But what is "the past"?

Do you have a memory of what you did one minute ago? Probably not. You might "know" what you did one minute ago, but it is not yet "set in memory".

Not much of this preamble thus far has much to do with 1989, but I ask these questions just to set up a perfunctory examination of what "memory" exactly is, and how it relates to time, and to consciousness.

I will leave it for now to mention that there have been programs within the CIA, such as Project Monarch, in which certain doctors were able - through extremely unscruplulous means - to alter memories within unwitting test subjects.

You can read books on the subjects for details, but my point is that, due to their willingness to experiment, these doctors discovered that the brain - the nerve center of the mind - is malleable .

All kinds of things can be done, on a test subject, to alter the perceptions of the mind, including the memory.

And when you think about it, a person's memory is really their life's scrapbook, or photo album. It's even really their bank account. A person's memory is what makes them rich. The guy that has done the most amazing things in his life, like climbing Mount Everest or going to the Moon - well, those memories, at the end of the day, and at the end of his life, are worth more than gold or diamonds. Remembering that you once walked on the Moon is worth more than all the money in the world.

So, we have established that memories, whatever they indeed are in the mechanical/cerebral sense, are absolutely priceless.

A person's memory bank is essentially the "movie reel of their life". Their life!

And so, imagine if you realised one day, that you could not account for part of your life.

But what if you then discovered that you had a visceral memory trigger with which you could begin to recover that missing time. Time past equals memories, does it not?

And so all these factors work together. I am really jumping around, I know, but I will continue to examine the idea of memory in this blog.

I have been reconstructing my memories of 1989 since about 1994 or so. But I still have a long way to go.

More to come in the next blog, or at least very soon.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)