Week 6 Prompt A

I can’t remember anything it seems like. I keep a daily journal because I can’t remember things. I write down detailed summaries of each and everyday. Impressions, stories, ideas, anything that I want to keep because if I don’t then it seems to just disappear. Some times I will go back in my memories and pull something out and try to talk about it with someone who was there. More times than not they will say something like “What are you talking about? That never happened!” I think the major problem I have is the wall between my imagination and my memory has been breeched. Fantasies and imagined occurrences keep leaking into my memory. Whatever leaks in almost always happens to be more interesting so I tend to remember it. On the other hand the leak leads to awkward moments when I say things like “Hey remember when you and I were lost in the desert outside of Nevada and we were rescued by that British survivalist in the hot air balloon?”

Looking back on photographs and on my beloved journal is something that always helps me to remember things. I can remember with perfect clarity the things that I see or read about. That makes me convinced that somewhere swimming in the soup of imaginative juices that my memories are really intact. It is just hard to dive through the sea of fantasy to find the sunken treasure. When I do find memories intact they are exactly that to me, treasure. I think that is why I keep a daily journal because it makes it easier for me to recollect those little bars of silver scattered from the wreck of my cognizance.

Upon examination, why I forget things it is really very obvious. Consumption of high doses of benzoylmethylecgonine, Lysergic acid diethylamide, Psilocybin, tetrahydrocannabinol, and organic compounds in the hydroxyl group have battered that wall between the segments of my mind to pieces. It is a real marvel that the thing is holding together at all. Not to mention the blunt trauma and concussions. To top it all off my deodorant has aluminum in it, a short cut to Alzheimer's. All together I am happy that I am working as well as I am. Nothing better could be expected. When you abuse a piece of electrical equipment (which is what our brains are) like that, a few short circuits and misfires are inherent.

Thinking about my memory makes me feel like Charlie from Flowers for Algernon, my mind is somehow slipping in ways that I can’t control or understand. That isn’t true though I can remember plenty of things, and I guess that it's not that it is falling apart, it is just working in a different way than most peoples. That is valuable in my opinion. Those quirky eccentricities make me what I am, and the complexities of the battered mind have more character than a brand new one.

So all in all I will accept me as who I am. I think I won’t try and dam the breeches between fantasy and reality. They make life so much more interesting. I am happy to float in this soup of imagination and every now and then strike on a bar of reality. If I ever need a stronger dose I can always open up the journal and take a deep thick whiff.

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