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#9
Remember, Forget
Memory, even more than the verifiable facts, is that which acts as the great
signifier of having lived. As intangible, delicate, erring, and often
ephemeral as it may be, it is this faculty that defines not only who one has
been but also who one is and who others are in relation to the remembering
individual. Without memory, there has been no life, and the present loses
virtually all meaning.
Intermixed within the memorious storehouse that is my mind are certain
dreams. I am not speaking of those dreams which define themselves as
"memorable" of their own accord, those recurring nightmares and surprising
Jungian archetypes, but of other dreams, dreams which are no more noteworthy
than the thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten ones. The dreams of
which I speak are ordinary, forgettable-save for the single but
all-important fact that they are, indeed, remembered. On occasion, when one
of these dreams has receded far enough into my past without slipping
entirely into the void of forgotten thoughts, it will surface in my
consciousness-not as a dream, but as a memory. And for a moment I will
hesitate: Was that a dream, or did it happen? Sometimes I cannot tell.
Usually, with a little effort (or fact-checking in the more extreme cases),
I can resolve the question; but there are one or two which have proved
impervious to my labors, Goridan knots that I cannot untie. I have the sense
that they may be dreams, but in my perception they seem as real as do other
memories documenting a corresponding event or epoch (and, in truth, there
are remembered incidents that I suspected to be dreams but that turned out
actually to have transpired).
As the years go by, I find myself more and more in doubt, confronted by an
ever-increasing number of memory questions (questionable memories, if you
will). Contrary to what one might expect, this does not disturb me; in fact,
I welcome the encroachment. I welcome it because, in general, these
remembered dreams I find to be more interesting and pleasant than the
mundanity that comprises the majority of my verifiable life. It is my hope
that, as the years go by, my memory will be more and more subsumed by this
phenomenon, so that, finally, the foundation of the cerebral storehouse of
my life will be completely undermined. It is then that I believe I will
welcome the remembrances of my life, a life so much more alive and worth
recollecting than this plebeian pageant I enjoy at present, a procession of
memory highlighted by so few moments, the best of which may be no more than
fortuitous eidetic slips.
—Greggory Moore
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