Tuesday, July 19, 2011

book talk: forgetting and remembering

I was just about to start teaching yesterday, and was pawing through my bag for the adaptor cord that links my laptop to the projector in my classroom. Paw, paw, paw. Rats.

I'd completely forgotten to throw it in my bag! The consequences weren't completely dire; my class that day just suddenly "got real." We were live and un-plugged. No powerpoint to help guide the mini-lesson on rhetorical appeals, no visual examples to practice with, no visual journal prompt. The students completely tuned in, though, to our discussion and participated with sharp insights and good questions. It might have been the best class of the semester...

It got me thinking about the meaning of forgetting, the consequences of it, the value of memory.

I've been connecting dots; the other day on NPR, I heard a review of this book:


A murder mystery where the main character, and primary suspect, is a 64 year-old woman with dementia. Now, I'm not usually one for murder mysteries, but the concept of forgetting and the tension and confusion it causes...this intrigues me. 

It is not a large leap from ideas of memory and forgetting to ideas of smell. I am currently nibbling my way through Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses, and her connections between smell and memory are so rich.


Within the first pages, Ackerman hooks you with evocative, intuitive sentences to link smell and memory:

"Nothing is more memorable than smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary, fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel...Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once."

All this has me thinking about memory, how important it is, and how bittersweet. Our senses are attuned to collecting memories. They document them and then hide them away for us, ready to be unearthed at the specifically triggered moment. Or, not. I wonder--is it better to remember, or to forget? Or, is it the subtle homeostasis of washing between the two that keeps us sane? 

2 comments:

Jess said...

Ackerman.. sounds familiar. what else does she write? anyway, her writing is great.
I think it's good to remember, but not too much. it's more important to give attention to this very moment than to get lost in the past, though in writing, remembering is key, because it adds layers and brings life to words.
I suppose, though this might sound too technical, that "remembering" is healthy and good, but "ruminating" is destructive and ought not be done.

nic said...

Hm. I like that distinction. It makes me think of a quote from Tea Leoni (why I remember this from a random magazine interview, I have no idea...) but she said, basically, "It's good to look back and remember, but not to look back and yearn." It is a constant struggle for me to be in the moment, but I agree with you that it is the necessary thing.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...