Memory’s Miscellany

I write things down, the Diarist said. What I see. What I hear. What I read. What I think: 

-The molting habits of various species of bird, 
-Why some newborns arrive with full heads of hair and others don’t, 
-Names of trees and how to identify them by their leaves,
-Lists of low-level, mid-level and high-level clouds with sketches of their shapes, 
-Snatches of conversations with characters, real or invented, things I thought I might say but -didn't, gossip, rumors, secrets shared in confidence, 
-News headlines, opinion pieces, political and religious tracts, 
-New words (or old words in new combinations), 
-The sound the wind makes as it whispers through the branches of a willow, 
-How that sound differs from wind blowing through high grass or the sound of a stone skipping -across a flat body of water.

I write them down so I won’t forget.

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He pointed to the stack of diaries and journals littering his writing desk. These are things I want to remember. I try to describe my days, what I find important in each of them. These things happened and were true enough to be written down.

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Keeping my journal or diary is like writing a confession, and impossible to recant, unless I destroy the page.

If I do that—destroy a page and what’s on it—it’s like it never happened and who’s to know what was written? 

And sooner or later, no matter how hard you try, even you will forget. 

---

Memory—it’s not reliable. 
It’s like everything else that’s human: it gets old, it loses its hair and takes on wrinkles. 
Sooner or later, it needs a cane to get around. 

When you remember something, you are simply recalling that last time you remembered it—and by that time, it was already years old. 

You might think you remember everything but you’re always going to be a bit off, so you fill in the blurred lines with a mental Sharpie, you provide details you made up on the spot. And those details remain part of the memory you recall the next time you remember it, but even then it's a bit more blurry and requires some additional sharpening. 

Give it more time and it doesn’t get any better.