Tasked to write an autobiographical essay about "secret spaces of childhood". This is an issue for me, as I do not have memories, or choose not to remember, these things. Perhaps as a consequence of this, I frequently experience the feeling of deja vu. An excursus into the Oxford English Dictionary provided the following:
Deja vu, An illusory feeling of having previously experienced a present situation; a form of paramnesia.
Paramnesia, Memory that is unreal, illusory, or distorted; spec. the phenomenon of deja vu, an instance of this. Also: loss of memory for the meaning of words.
This last sentence fascinated me immediately; sans punctuation but with the connector for it can be read two ways:
1. That one cannot remember what words mean, or
2. To indicate that the meaning of words is given at the cost of memory.
Consider:
Memory like a void, or the bottom of the well where water seeps into ground. A black hole of experiences. An obsession with words in exchange for memories. Ambivalence towards a belief in the unconscious.
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