The Boring Parts- Oct 25 2025

 

The Boring Parts

Oct 25 2025

If memory worked like film

 — documenting 

second by second 

exact reality —

I’d likely slip out

during one of the boring parts

and kill time ‘til the end.

Maybe hang out in the lobby

flirting with the popcorn girl

as the muffled sound

rumbles through the walls.

Because it was better in my head;

like the book they based the movie on

you already read

always is.

What celluloid would record

if memory was photographic,

as opposed to the stories we tell

the sense we make.

Because time changes things.

Stuff gets made up 

events conflate.

Retrospect colours,

retelling retouches,

and forgetting airbrushes

out the painful stuff

or plain embarrassing.

And in the end

who knows what’s made up

and what’s for real.

Yet it’s the film

that would feel like fiction.

Because it couldn’t have happened like that.

Not how I remember it.

I would never have said

or done.

Or would I?

Was the lobby empty,

did I stay in my seat,

was it even a theatre

or on TV?

And please, don’t tell me how it ends.

When the last remaining copy

flaws and all

will be lost for good.

I’ve often talked about the unreliability of memory. The science confirms this: every time a memory is called up, it gets revised. This new memory is influenced by mood, emotion, physical pain, recent experience, denial, embellishment, and the need to either believe or disbelieve. 

Memories fade. Memory cuts out the boring parts. Memory is not photographic, it’s an attempt to make sense of things. 

Memory has been crafted by evolution not to be an objective documentarian, but to serve survival.