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1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 2. Ouroboros of Memory | ||
3 | genre: prose | ||
4 | |||
5 | epigraph: | ||
6 | content: | | ||
7 | He used his body to remember | ||
8 | his body, but in the end could only | ||
9 | remember the string. | ||
10 | attrib: Jonathan Safran Foer | ||
11 | link: 'http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2315' | ||
12 | |||
13 | project: | ||
14 | title: Stark Raving | ||
15 | css: stark | ||
16 | order: 12 | ||
17 | next: | ||
18 | - title: L'appel du vide | ||
19 | link: lappel-du-vide | ||
20 | - title: 3. Love as God | ||
21 | link: love-as-god | ||
22 | prev: | ||
23 | - title: Table of contents | ||
24 | link: table_contents | ||
25 | - title: 1. Initial Conditions | ||
26 | link: initial-conditions | ||
27 | ... | ||
28 | |||
29 | [He said][] at the beginning, "It's like rolling yarn into a too-small ball. | ||
30 | Sure, you can roll the memories around for a while, and maybe even use some of them. | ||
31 | Eventually, though, you'll wind them all the way out and you'll be left with nothing but a small loop. | ||
32 | You can tie this loop around your finger, and start wrapping your body, but this is an extension of the same problem. | ||
33 | You'll turn into a mummy of memory. | ||
34 | There'll be nothing left underneath but a dead body. | ||
35 | |||
36 | "But what does it mean, _To remember the body with the body?_ | ||
37 | I imagine a creature made of memory, putting its feet in its mouth, turning into a ball. | ||
38 | In this way, it could roll all around the landscape of its memory. | ||
39 | I've tried explaining this to other people, but it doesn't make any sense to them. | ||
40 | The task of eating one's feet is, to them, an unsolvable problem. | ||
41 | They seem to forgotten that, as babies, they were able to make themselves into loops. | ||
42 | |||
43 | "So I increase the count to two: two snakes eating each other's tales, forming a loop. | ||
44 | In this way they are able to put two heads on one body. | ||
45 | This doubles the number of memories, which really only exacerbates the problem. | ||
46 | It's like trying to roll two different materials up into a ball. | ||
47 | The people I tell this to don't understand this either, they say using two animals makes sense to them. | ||
48 | They say there must be different types of memory. | ||
49 | |||
50 | "I disagree with this theory of memory. | ||
51 | I think there is, at bottom, only one type of anything, with subtypes grouped together along the edge of a loop. | ||
52 | Color becomes a good metaphor: look how many of them! | ||
53 | yet they are all consumed by the same part of the body. | ||
54 | Maybe two different materials are still made of material, and maybe they can be rolled into a ball. | ||
55 | Maybe there actually never was a problem. | ||
56 | |||
57 | "Or maybe, and this is more likely, I need to restate the problem. | ||
58 | I think it all boils down to the fact that I have a truly lousy memory. | ||
59 | I've tried different mnemonic devices, like imagining each thing I need to remember being visited by a bouncing ball. | ||
60 | I've tried trying string into finger-loops. | ||
61 | I've even tried writing the things I need to remember on my body. | ||
62 | If you asked me, 'Do any of these work,' I would have to answer, 'None of them.' | ||
63 | |||
64 | "Sometimes in the morning I realize dumbly I've forgotten my words, all of them. | ||
65 | They generally come back by around ten o'clock, but the frequency with which this is occurring is becoming a problem. | ||
66 | I feel that my brain is being separated from my body. | ||
67 | Is there a place in the universe for a misplaced memory? | ||
68 | Does it eat its own tail and roll around the universe as it loops? | ||
69 | Does it shrink down and become lost as a tiny ball? | ||
70 | |||
71 | No matter what happens, eventually _I_ will become _them_ as I lose the last of my memory. | ||
72 | I won't be able to solve the problem of my being, and my being will become my problem, in an eternal loop. | ||
73 | I will roll my body into a prenatal ball. | ||
74 | |||
75 | [He said]: joke.html | ||