The Non-Remembrance of Things Past - Page 3


Your past, your knowledge, your you seems to be melting away, incident by incident, fact by fact, memory by memory, as an enveloping fog descends around you, thickening each day. Memories that used to stick are now slippery. What used to be Velcro has become Teflon. You get up to write something down and, by the time you reach your pen, you've forgotten what you were going to write. You always seem to be looking or searching for something: in your pockets, on your desk, in your head. You run into someone on the street, he looks familiar, he's saying hello, it's apparent he knows you, but who is he? You perceive he may perceive your non-remembrance, and out of politeness or bruised feelings or sheer sadism (or maybe you're wrong and it's because he can't remember exactly who you are either and, like you, finds it too awkward to say so), he lets you hang there, twisting slowly in the wind, without identifying himself.

As one confounding blank stare after another creepily takes the place of those memories you used to rely on, a host of new acquaintances—embarrassment, apology, nervous laughter, disbelief, self-mockery, bewilderment, anxiety—make more frequent appearances in your life.

And it isn't just you. (Thank God.)

Take, for example, your friend. There he is: eyes agleam, smiling, animatedly telling you a story. (Or you might be telling him one.). Almost inevitably, there comes that awfulmoment when he pauses (or you pause). Eyes lose luster, mouth slackens. He (or you) is utterly lost. It's as if an invisible ray gun had zapped a hole in his (or your) brain. "What was her name?" "Where was I?" "What was I talking about?" he (or you) will ask, more often than not fruitlessly, because shake your two brains as you might, you'll hear nothing rattling inside. Neither of you has any idea what the answer might be. Whatever he (or you) was about to say, is nowhere to be found.

He makes (or you make) a lame joke about his (or your) failing memory, and the story, now somewhat hobbled, proceeds, with one not-insignificant consolation: misery loving company as it does, you're happy to find a fellow passenger in the boat you sometimes fear you've been drifting in alone.

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