i often think about the things that i have stored in my brain. some things are useless factoids, some are emotionally charged memories, some are reminders of the myriad of exhausting hours that i must spend memorizing more information so that i might prove myself worthy on yet another examination.
do you ever wish that you could have an SD card slot in your brain?
i was speaking to someone a while ago about my capacity for memory. how my brain feels like a bucket and water is information. i can only fill my bucket up so much until information sloshes over the sides, lost. lost. lost until i relearn it.
former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem that reminds me of this phenomena. my favorite lines are the ones where he speaks about getting up at night to look up information forgotten. “no wonder you you rise in the middle of the night…” as if the shadow of this memory haunts so deeply that one rises out of the warm haven of sleep to reclaim that lost factoid.
someone put the poem to animation, which is neat:
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
