Memory

Used to be I could recall better than. I do now. I could read things and retain them. People thought me smart and I thought it was all memory.

Nowadays there are gaps. I cannot recall well enough to quote. I make notes like this one. I recall things I had not realized I had forgotten. 

I put some of this to my sleep apnea. Some to age. Some to having just moved too fast for too long, having shunted aside what I did not need for the matter at hand 

All this brings me to Agnes Heller's Speaking of Memory and this passage that fits my conception of memory's importance:

Memory is a precondition to all knowledge, though we cannot say this about involuntary memory despite the claims to the contrary by scientists, such as Einstein. This random and haphazard stimulus, this involuntary snippet of memory, be it a feeling, an image or a sound, considered inspiration by poets, intuition by scientists, and enlightenment by religious orders, is capable of triggering an entire avalanche of new knowledge, beliefs, and theories.    

And it is what constitutes us as human being. We are our pasts. Our memory holds our past. I remember therefore I am myself.

sch 5/28/22