In the Short Term

If you turn on a media device, you may hear about a mentally handicapped Texan causing a stir in D.C. No, not that one, the other one (SO scary that there is more than one.....). Alberto Gonzales is the one I'm referring to this time, though the other one is certainly still of concern and should not be forgotten about.

And memory is precisely the issue here. Mr. Gonzales has displayed an impressive ability to "not recall" nearly all details concerning when or where various meetings and decisions took place, or if they took place at all. One may question whether his memory loss is a ploy, but I'm not so sure it is. It really seems that he doesn't remember these details, that they are gone from his mind, and it doesn't seem to bother him or the other mentally challenged Texan. They both seem quite content with the memory loss, which certainly speaks to it being a ploy, but I think instead they're just very used to it. It's normal in their lives, as it seems to be normal in the lives of many people.

Over the years, but most especially in very recent months, I've had the pleasure of running across people's memory lapses, and enjoying the problems those lapses then causes me. For instance; I just had my tonsils out, I can't really do much but watch TV, take pain meds, and type on the computer, teaching is certainly out of the picture. A parent brought her daughter to her piano lesson though, despite the e-mails, the hand outs, the face to face conversations stretching back for nearly 2 months telling her and her daughter that I would not be in to teach until the first week of May, because I have open wounds in my throat and am on narcotics. This is not her first memory laps of this kind, she does it constantly in fact, and the fun part is she then blames me. She even once personally offered to create and maintain a schedule for me, since it seemed I was having a terribly difficult time keeping my lessons straight on my own. I wanted to laugh loudly in her face and point out that I was doing just fine keeping 40 shifting and rearranging student schedules running smoothly, thank you, SHE was the one having the issue keeping her ONE child's schedule on track. Instead I of course thanked her and said I would get it put together, things were just busy and the weekend would allow me to catch up. I upped the number of correspondences about schedule changes with her in the hopes she could be helped, but I'm coming to realize that that is just not possible for some.

If you can't remember shit, you can't remember it, and no amount of reminding will help. Unfortunately our perception of reality is based in large part on our ability to remember events, and the ability to remember those events accurately. The more inaccuracy that seeps in, the more reality starts to loose all objectivity and becomes a huge subjective mess. This makes consensus amongst us humans fairly impossible. This, as one could imagine (if one remembers to do so) could cause problems.

I have a good memory. I actually always thought it was just pretty average at best; I can't do crazy things like remember a list of 100 items at a single glance, or recite poetry or song lyrics after only one listen, but I'm realizing these are really just freakish party tricks, useful though they could be. They should not be the bar by which one judges one's self, they are amazing abilities to be wondered at and perhaps pay admission to see. I cannot do these fun little tricks, but I remember pretty accurately the things that I do, things that I say, things that others do to me and things they say to me. I remember where I am all the time, I don't get lost, I remember what direction I'm going in. I remember facts that I hear and read to a pretty deep degree and can give you a good run down of those facts for a long time afterward. Give me time to study and I can go even farther. No, it's not reciting Pi to 10,000 digits, but it really does seem to be more useful. I do regret that I am terrible with names, but I try. I will remember the date I met you, what you were wearing, and any number of other interestingly useless facts about the time, but I'm sorry, I probably won't remember your name....

I'm finding others are not as capable. Facts twist, events fade from memory and are replaced by imaginary ones, conversations that did happen are forgotten and are replaced with ones that happened only in people's minds. Most of the time I can just shake my head, ignore the problem and move on, or perhaps remind the person how I recall the event, where they will often respond with "oh yeah, that's right.... I forgot." But lately I seem to instead be getting my ass munched because of things I did, things I didn't do, things I should have done, and/or things I could have done but didn't. But.... as I remember events I DIDN'T do that, I DID do that, I SHOULDN'T have done that, and what COULD have been done was.

Many times there's proof, but proof is not so welcome I think these days. Either it is repressed, as the Texans like to do, or it is dismissed as false, as the Religious Right likes to do (guess that includes the Texans too...), which is also the tactic the rest of the public seems to like. We're often quite fond of our own thoughts, and so our own recollection of events trumps the video footage, because... uh... video can be faked and our memories are more concrete? Yes, well our memories are our own, and no one else's, and you can't take that away from me, as the song goes. These days truth is always subjective, and we feel so much better about ourselves because of it.

Add to our love of our own memories this; if you're in a position of power you can force your memory of events to be taken as the "true" version, it's the privilege of that power position. The Texans love that fact, and take advantage of it ad nauseam (I've been so nauseamed for so long.... at least I'm loosing weight). The rest of us will use that power position as often as possible as well. We can't handle being wrong, to the point that we defend our positions to the death; the death of the other person of course.

I also hate being wrong, it's one of the things I honestly hate most in life. I LOVE being right. I love being right so much that if I find out I'm wrong, I CHANGE MY POSITION, right then and there, with gratitude to the person or entity that is right. I want to actually BE right, not just THINK I'm right though. To that end I work very hard to remember things as accurately as I possibly can, my own ego out of the picture, with merely my obsession with the truth driving me. It's sick really, but it's a sickness I'm pretty ok with.

I'm moving out of the country soon. Maybe across the pond truth still trumps ego, but in reality humans are humans are humans, and I don't have a lot of hope. I am much more leery these days, I think it's best to keep more proof on hand. After I move it will just have to be in multiple languages. It's the prudent thing to do I think, in case I get called in front of Congress and don't want to look like a moron, or I get accused of things in a more personal arena and don't want to be painted as a heartless fool again.