Aug 15 2013
Once you come to accept
that memories drift
shape-shift
spin fibs,
like a fast-talking grifter
or confidence man,
you will always suspect the truth;
not just her version, or his
but your own.
Memory is liquid,
bending some light
reflecting more.
As water, cupped in your hands
slips through your fingers
takes its container's form.
So that quick-silver truth, from which memory's born
runs-off
into porous soil.
We reconstruct memories
each time we call them up,
contaminate our own
with something seen, or told.
There is no album
of family photos
opened, and closed.
No documentary film
whirring away
in its projector,
saturated light
in a blacked-out skull.
So what to make of us
if all we are
is what we remember,
can be re-invented
despite ourselves?
When even the best intentioned truth
is subjective,
and the utter conviction
of the sworn eye-witness
unreliable?
When we stand on shifting sand
and thirst for a firm foundation,
while the past
spills through our hands
and we dig ourselves deeper?
For happy or sad
better or worse,
but never quite sure
it happened like that.
I've written about this before: the malleable, unreliable nature of memory. (And how much I tried to get "malleable"/"fallible" to work somewhere in the poem -- unsuccessfully, as it turns out!)
Dementia, most of all, makes us appreciate how critical memory is to our sense of self. Memory situates us, creates personal meaning from a loosely connected series of events, places us in a 3-dimensional past. Without memory, we disappear. Living in the immediate and ephemeral present, our personality and temperament may be preserved, but life is shallow: as fleeting, superficial, and frictionless as skating over the surface of a frozen sea.
This is why I chose "All We Are" as the title. I wanted those words to jump out when they come up in the poem, to have the extra powerful resonance of recognition and repetition. "So what to make of us/ if all we are/ is what we remember?" (2nd line of the 4th stanza.)
The other message of the piece has to do the neuroscience of memory; that is, its fluidity: the way we reconstruct a memory each time it's recalled. And the critical meaning here is the utter subjectivity of truth: not only that everyone has his/her own version of events, but that we have a changing and unreliable one ourselves. This is the Rashomon take on the world, calling into question not only the nature of truth, but the idea of an objective reality altogether.
This is valuable perspective to take through life. It counsels one to be humble about certain belief, to eschew self-righteous conviction, and to be receptive to seemingly contradictory views. (Of course, most of the time I fail at this!) It's why a court of law may render a verdict of right or wrong, while both may be true. Why in break-ups and in war, all sides have their cherished narratives, and partial truths. Why eye witness testimony has no validity, and why there may be more versions of the truth than there are participants.
We may comfort ourselves with the illusion of standing on solid ground, on the bedrock of accumulated memory and sense of self. While in fact, the foundational beliefs and self-evident truths which guide our lives may be no more than shifting sand. Which is OK, just as long as we realize, deep down, that such certainties are merely convenient constructs, put in place to make life bearable, predictable, and coherent; to get us through.
Once you come to accept
that memories drift
shape-shift
spin fibs,
like a fast-talking grifter
or confidence man,
you will always suspect the truth;
not just her version, or his
but your own.
Memory is liquid,
bending some light
reflecting more.
As water, cupped in your hands
slips through your fingers
takes its container's form.
So that quick-silver truth, from which memory's born
runs-off
into porous soil.
We reconstruct memories
each time we call them up,
contaminate our own
with something seen, or told.
There is no album
of family photos
opened, and closed.
No documentary film
whirring away
in its projector,
saturated light
in a blacked-out skull.
So what to make of us
if all we are
is what we remember,
can be re-invented
despite ourselves?
When even the best intentioned truth
is subjective,
and the utter conviction
of the sworn eye-witness
unreliable?
When we stand on shifting sand
and thirst for a firm foundation,
while the past
spills through our hands
and we dig ourselves deeper?
For happy or sad
better or worse,
but never quite sure
it happened like that.
I've written about this before: the malleable, unreliable nature of memory. (And how much I tried to get "malleable"/"fallible" to work somewhere in the poem -- unsuccessfully, as it turns out!)
Dementia, most of all, makes us appreciate how critical memory is to our sense of self. Memory situates us, creates personal meaning from a loosely connected series of events, places us in a 3-dimensional past. Without memory, we disappear. Living in the immediate and ephemeral present, our personality and temperament may be preserved, but life is shallow: as fleeting, superficial, and frictionless as skating over the surface of a frozen sea.
This is why I chose "All We Are" as the title. I wanted those words to jump out when they come up in the poem, to have the extra powerful resonance of recognition and repetition. "So what to make of us/ if all we are/ is what we remember?" (2nd line of the 4th stanza.)
The other message of the piece has to do the neuroscience of memory; that is, its fluidity: the way we reconstruct a memory each time it's recalled. And the critical meaning here is the utter subjectivity of truth: not only that everyone has his/her own version of events, but that we have a changing and unreliable one ourselves. This is the Rashomon take on the world, calling into question not only the nature of truth, but the idea of an objective reality altogether.
This is valuable perspective to take through life. It counsels one to be humble about certain belief, to eschew self-righteous conviction, and to be receptive to seemingly contradictory views. (Of course, most of the time I fail at this!) It's why a court of law may render a verdict of right or wrong, while both may be true. Why in break-ups and in war, all sides have their cherished narratives, and partial truths. Why eye witness testimony has no validity, and why there may be more versions of the truth than there are participants.
We may comfort ourselves with the illusion of standing on solid ground, on the bedrock of accumulated memory and sense of self. While in fact, the foundational beliefs and self-evident truths which guide our lives may be no more than shifting sand. Which is OK, just as long as we realize, deep down, that such certainties are merely convenient constructs, put in place to make life bearable, predictable, and coherent; to get us through.
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