Our memory films our passing.
And more, it edits it,
selects the pleasant facts.
Thrown back upon that inner screen,
away from all that fashioned it,
it loses sense
significance.
It flickers intermittently.
Deep shades of thought and meaning pass before our eyes
but somehow in the video
the deeper feeling dies.
We still, as in a dream, receive
the vicious blow again
and dream-like still
the blow we feel,
but do not sense the pain.
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9 comments:
So true, Dave. Our memory films and edits and reviews and revises our passing to help us deal with the pain.
A fantastic poem. Thanks, Dave.
Great opening line, and your thoughts are very true. Memory it is such a tricky thing.
I am not so convinced of the benevolence of memory. It is an inefficient storage medium at best and that is why we suffer less when we remember the pain of the past because it was never recorded accurately in the first place. I remember things I would rather forget and can’t recall experiences I would dearly love to relive. This is not meant to criticise the poem. This is simply what came to me after reading it. One of the reasons Left turned into the book it did was because of my inability to draw on childhood memories. There are things I know we did many times over like going to the beach with my family but I don’t actually remember going to the beach. What I have in my head is an amalgam of beach related images over about a ten-year period, nothing filmic.
That editor is driving me crazy, but I'm so glad the soundtrack is there.
Great poem.
Editing the memory is a great pastime. Your words again open up much for thought and discussion.
Our memory is truely an amazing device just like a camera :-).
Yes, Dave, memory is so interesting isn't it? I recently met an old friend I hadn't seen for fifty years - our memories of the past were totally different and neither of us could remember the incidents the other related.
Elisabeth
It does do so, yes, I wonder sometimes how much inpiut we have in the editing. Thanks for the response.
120 socks
Isn't it just? As I discover more and more as time passes!
Jim
I can relate to a lot of what you say. The poem was not meant to put the whole picture. Especially, I can relate to your remark about an amalgam of related images. I can think of several examples, though I have tended to think of them in what the psychologists term schemata, like those you have sometimes for words which are "on the tip of the tongue" but will not come. Some theorists are inclined to think that maybe all memories are there. It's not the memory that lets us down, but the retrieval system.
I also agree that we are not always able to remember (Or retrive) the things we would choose to recall. Quite the reverse.
I'm beginning to think I should write a poem about the other side of the coin.
Kass
They do say that it's the editing that makes or breaks a film, more so than the directing!
TechnoBabe
As do yours for me. The idea of the editing as a pastime - now, there's a thought worth chasing!
Windsmoke
Indeed. Just like.
Weaver of Grass
I suppose that's an extreme case of what is a quite common experience, b ut yes, it is interesting, it brings the issue intp quite stark relief. Thanks for it.
what great poem to relay that feeling in dreams where we have the images and just an overall sense of the emotion and sweep of it. This happens in both the good and bad memories.
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