Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Reconsolidated Life

Re-memory. Word by way of Toni Morrison's Beloved. Re-collect, re-call, re-consolidate.
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"Reactivating a memory destabilizes it, putting it back into a flexible, vulnerable state." Kathleen McGowan, "How Much of Our Memory Is True?" Discover Magazine

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"Neuroscientists say that what we remember bears a resemblance to what actually happened in inverse proportion to the frequency with which we remember it. That is, the more often we remember something, the further it is from the truth." Kit Robinson, The Grand Piano, Part 5
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"Do you remember how he first came to your attention?" DG, about an author I published.
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"As often as not, I don't know what to make of what I remember. In this regard memory and dream bear a striking resemblance. Not that it's a problem. In each case, the specificity of the phenomenal somehow satisfies me. This cannot be laziness on my part. How then to account for these pearls from the deep?" Kit Robinson
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"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste" William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30
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"The era of memory treatment has arrived. For Rita Magil, who got just two doses of propranolol over the course of a single day, the results were encouraging. Her heart rate and muscle tension eased while the drug was in her body. She sensed the different too. 'I felt more detached from it,' she says. 'I felt that I was relating a narrative rather than describing something right in front of me right now.' After the study was over, the flashbacks returned, though with less intensity. For her, the only real cure was time." Kathleen McGowan
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"In writing from memory, I suffer the persistent sense of hitting wrong notes. By persevering I hope to make it all come out right. And if not, tant pis. Or so much the better!" Kit Robinson
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"(You will not be tested or graded on this material–it's recherche du temps perdu.)"

"Unsolicited?

Through the mail?" DG

1 comment:

a.k.a. "Joe" said...

a blog post after my own heart (formalist)