My friend and co-conspirator Danny once told me this story:
At Christmas, a few years back, as he and his family were sitting down to dinner the phone rang abruptly. His father answered, a bit surprised to find the voice on the other end belonging to a friend he had lost contact with for about twenty-five or so years, from back in the days when he worked as a physicist in Sweden. “Bill,†his friend said, “I’m glad I caught you. I just wanted to go over some of the new procedures we set up in the labs so everyone’s on the same page when we get to work tomorrow.â€
Danny’s father was dumbfounded and unsure how to proceed. After all, it had been ages since he was either a member of the Swedish workforce or employed in a physics lab. “Jim,†he said, “we haven’t worked together in close to twenty-five years.â€
He was met with silence on the other end of the line. “Are you all right, Jim?†he asked.
“No. I don’t think I am.†Joe then hung up the phone, and the family resumed their dinner.
A couple of years after that Bill was in Sweden visiting some family and decided to look up his friend. After hitting a series of dead ends, he finally contacted some family members that filled him in on some unfortunate history: Jim had spent much of the past few years in a vegetative state. Still curious about the mysterious phone call, he pressed on and found out where he was hospitalized and decided to make the trek to visit him. Upon arriving, the doctors scoffed at his story, merely stating that Jim’s periods of lucidity were so few and far between that to think that he had just come to, remembered Bill, and then managed to find his phone number stateside and ring him up was a bit preposterous. Bill was convinced too, and then took one last look at his friend before turning and heading for the door. Before he got out of the room, he heard a faint voice from behind him: “Bill, I want my John Fahey record back soon.â€
Bill turned and saw the same motionless body that he had seen moments earlier, but the various doctors and nurses present couldn’t dispute what had happened. Jim had spoken.
The John Fahey record in question had been borrowed in the seventies.
I really wish I understood how memory actually works. From my own perspective, certain situations/events/people/places resonate with particular clarity time and time again, no matter how much the passage of time distances me from them. There are other things that for whatever reasons remain ones for the ages, with distinct textured images replaced merely by faint whispers of emotions, brief snippets that evoke something unnamed from the past. My mind is a cross between the two, trading off snapshots with blurred images, both of which seem as urgent as anything else I try to file away – what one has in clarity the other has in strength of personal importance. I cited the above story as an example of the odd ways in which all of our memories work. At times we are oblivious to things other people remember and see, instead relying on our own conceptions/reconstructions of the past to guide us through the present day’s events.
I have also attached a picture of a skinny girl that has little or nothing to do with what I have just said- which I'm actually not sure I myself understand.
I'm going to make a movie now. See you later.