autobiographical memory

I left Friday's class feeling very satisfied, thinking to myself how content i was to be in this class, and how valuable such a course is. I have been thinking about memory a lot, last semester it was something I would constantly journal about personally. The ways that memory manifests itself in us and functions are mysterious and intriguing. I think a class like Oral Traditions, where we really investigate the mind's capacity for memory, are infinitely interesting because memory is a phenomenon that pervades our entire human existence. So no wonder the same topics keep on coming up again in Dr. Sexson's courses between the years (other topics that came up last semester that I distinctly remembered from my courses with Sexson two years ago included William Blake, "Dead Man", Lycidas, and of course, the ever returning "Idea of Order at Key West"). The mind, our memories, keep taking us back. It is a force beyond our control.

My thoughts were echoed (and better articulated) on page 12 of the book I borrowed "Why life speeds up as you get older":

"Between our first memories and the forgetfullness of old age, between the formation of the memory and the erosion of memories, between the not yet and the no longer being able to remember, lie questions that are bound to arise in each of us simply because we have a memory. It is impossible not to look astonished at something that has been our companion all our life" (Draaisma 12)

That's what makes a course like this, and a book like Draaisma's, so exciting and fascinating. This is the phenomenon of memory. We all have questions and curiosities about how our memories function. Why it is we'll be sitting in the classroom, taking notes on a completely unrelated subject, and suddenly see a visual flash of, say, a narrow street in Murcia, Spain, where we studied the year before. Not a street with any particular significance, like the street you lived on, just a street you would walk down from time to time on your way to a friend's flat or the grocery store. And then the places your mind goes after that unexpected visual, the emotions attached to it, the notion of nostalgia.

A fascinating thing about flash memories is the mood swings they can induce. Apart from feeling a general sense of nostalgia, sometimes, we find ourselves laughing or smiling remembering a happy moment in our lives. Or ackward and embarrassed. Or guilty. Or all of it. Sometimes for no particular reason I see a scene of my spanish life played out again in my head, I feel happy remembering it, and then sad or even devastated, that I only have those moments now as memories; that's its all over. That time in my life has been condemned to the past, to the realm of memory. It's funny because memories should be like gifts, souveniers of the good times to remember how happy we were, but I find they're most always accompanied by a sense of loss, loss for that time in my life. There's something tragic about it. And those moods that memories evoke make the study even more fascinating...