I read a very interesting article in this month’s issue of Wired about memories: how they’re formed and changed by the act of recollection, and how it may soon be possible to selectively edit them. Our memories are neither static nor pristine – they’re not perfect recordings of our experiences, but more like movies we edit and re-edit, Lucas-like, based on our current emotions and perceptions.
A part of me finds this disturbing. The past is another country, and apparently less France than Narnia. I’ve always tied a lot of my identity to my past. Learning that I had large gaps in memories of my twenties was horrifying to me a few years ago. But it’s not just that my past shapes me, but that I shape my past – it’s a cyclic relationship, a feedback loop. The present rises from the past, speaks back to it, and reshapes it.
I think I was a teenager when I first read “The Dragonriders of Pern”. I loved it – I love dragons, I waited all season with bated breath to watch Daenerys hatch hers on “Game of Thrones” – and I read the next several, as many as were available on library shelves.
I haven’t read any of them in years, and I’m a little suprised to realize I don’t own a single one. And I’m saddened to read this morning that Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series, has passed away.
She was a talented writer who brought joy and wonder to millions, and by all accounts she was a lovely person as well. My heart goes out to her loved ones.
We talk about adding a new star to the firmament, and this justly honors the dear and departed, but it seems like little comfort to those whose world feels suddenly and abruptly smaller.
I don’t listen to the radio much. And I pretty much never call in to the radio station – except once. I was in college, and I heard this cool new song. The singer had an amazing voice. She reminded me of Debbie Harry: she could go from angelic to savage in no time at all, and she could drown out an army of guitars doing it.
But I missed the DJ telling us what song we’d just heard. And I really wanted to rush out and get that CD, now. So I picked up the phone. And I learned it was Eve’s Plum, singing “I Want It All”. Thusly:
I still think Colleen Fitzpatrick has one of the most underrated voices in rock. I wish Eve’s Plum hadn’t split up after only two albums, because they were great. And I wish Ms. Fitzpatrick would record something new and rockin’, and do it right soon.
I haven’t accessed Outlook in a couple of years. My email comes to my phone or my iPad, and sometimes I check my accounts on the Web, but I just haven’t gone into Outlook. I forget why exactly. Anyway, needless to say there were about a gajillion emails in there that Outlook didn’t realize I’d long since addressed.
So I started reading through some of them. And I almost didn’t recognize the me that I saw in them. Some of it was the same old me – the endless obsessive loops, the neediness. The rest of it wasn’t like looking at a stranger so much as a clear reminder of how far I’ve come from where I was. And not all of that distance was well-traveled.
Where did I stop finding it easy to talk to people? When did I lose my warmth and connections? Was I really that much in constant contact with my family? And why, for the love of God, did I let that go? How does someone who’s suffered from BPD all his life just walk away from the people he loves?
I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle, only without the restful nap. It’s not news to me that I’m not who I was, or that I did what I did, but it’s a little shocking to see just how different I’ve let myself become. It’s the boiling frog thing: I let a little go, and a little more, and a little more, and before long it’s a wreck and I haven’t even noticed because I’ve come to imagine it was always a wreck. But it wasn’t.
And that’s another reminder that it doesn’t have to be.
There’s a lot of work to be done. There’s therapy, and medication, and making others a part of my life again, and trying to rebuild all those bridges I let fall or burned. None of it gets done by being maudlin or by not looking at what needs doing. I am moving in the right direction. I keep moving, I keep pushing myself, I keep trying.
A friend shared what sounds like a recipe for an excellent pear cream pie. Someday, when I am a bit more ambitious, I am going to attempt it. Pears are delicious. Pies are delicious. What could go wrong?
I like cooking. I’m a bit tired from work (and stuffed from another free lunch), so I probably won’t do much of it tonight. Perhaps some brownies, but they’re from a mix so I don’t really count that as cooking. But there’s a wonderful healing satisfaction in eating a fresh home-cooked meal, and even more so if you’ve made it yourself.
I still remember the first thing I ever baked: cherry turnovers. It was in home ec class in eighth grade. I wanted to bring them home to show off to my parents, so I put them in my backpack with my books. You can all guess how that turned out. (My book-mania was less advanced in those days. Now I’d be all kinds of bent out of shape about getting cherry goo all over my books.) Anyway, I thought they were pretty good.
So I guess I could go wrong by putting my pear cream pie in a backpack. But I think I’m smart enough to step around that punji pit.
