memory, senses and meaning
this morning i've been watching "60 minutes" on youtube about people with special neurological conditions
the first type was "foreign accent syndrome" and the second type was people who could remember every day of their lives (perfect autobiographical memory)
scientists have no "explanation" for the "foreign accent syndrome" and say that the voice just "happens" to create an accent but...how is it that even the grammar matches the language of the perceived accent? it's strange isn't it?
well scientists do that thing where they think of everything EXCEPT the possibility of a new paradigm which would conveniently fit this syndrome (as well as many others) neatly into its explanations...
PAST LIVES!
(that would also explain the strange past life recalls with veridical evidence -- are past lives or the existence of a non-corporeal soul the unifying theory of these strange phenomena?)
anyway!
they found that people with perfect autobiographical memory have some qualities in common, for ex they have "extreme" or "excessive" organizational quirks
my mom doesn't have the condition but she has pretty outstanding memory (not just autobiographical; she also has some photographic memories and is good at memorizing numbers) and she is also pretty obsessive about organization
i feel i don't have good autobiographical memory at all, like it's actually exceptionally bad. it's so terrible because i'm trying to write stories drawn from autobiographical experience but i cannot remember! i'm also not very organized.
i only have good memory when it comes to language and facts that interest me (non-autobiographical memory) -- things that mean something
i love deriving meaning from words. when we arrived in indonesia, i was drinking in the signs and menus and every written word i could find and making connections. after a while, words started to make sense. the word "ikan", for example, would bring to mind a vague feeling of "fish" (i think my subconscious must've gathered all the times when i saw the word "ikan" and saw a picture of fish next to them). the words trigger autobiographical memory because i can remember the exact moment i learned them and how. i remember wanting to know what "teh asli" meant because i knew that hitam was black, and teh is tea but the tea that we were drinking was called teh asli. i googled "asli" and understood that it meant original. later, when i heard the words "orang asli" i understood the meaning. and when i heard dini say that she's from holland but "asli indonesia" i understood.
i guess i remember moments of trying to derive meaning and the moments of having made sense of something -- those moments come back to me vividly. i even remember the face and voice of the cab driver who said "orang asli" -- i remember there was a big bus driving by us with orang asli pictured on it. i remember we were heading to an indian restaurant with a 4.8-rating
(facts about things that interest me go in this direction of "making sense of the world" ; i remember that reading prolongs your life by 23 months ... i also remember that the loving kindness meditation lengthens your telomeres -- it's like i tuck these memories away in my mind so i can correlate them later...i think reading triggers empathy and so does the loving kindness meditation and it's interesting how they both help you live longer)
i started writing this in order to figure out what "sense" is most profound for me when it comes to encoding and retrieving memory
and i didn't expect all of these ideas and realizations to come out
but i think it's not a sense at all, actually. i remember with all my senses but something "new" must've been learned in that moment for me to remember it...
making meaning of things and the way that the world works, that's what i remember -- i just realized that i remember people by the things they've said to me and the people who have meant the most to me are people who have said enlightening things to me. that's why h was for me so important. he was wise and good at transmitting his ideas verbally.
that's what i spend most of my "inner" time doing -- walking in the jungle, i was paying attention to the world outside of me, but back in italy, because there is nothing "new" to be learned, i am stuck inside my mind, trying to make sense...
if there is nothing new on the outside, i find something new for the inside (by reading for example)
maybe this is what they call an "analytical mind" but it is geared toward the world of feeling and qualitative experience, and not the world of AC/DC electrical stuff or engines which i'm SO bad at...
it's weird how words help me, too.
it's almost as though it's the way through which the divine channels into me...the way music channels through other people
when i began writing this, i just wanted to figure out which sense of mine was the most prominent, and by the end of it, i had reached a conclusion which went beyond the scope of the paradigm i had assumed.
for me, it's not the sense -- it's MEANING.
the sense memories can be retrieved through meaning...
can this be the key to writing my autobiographically-inspired stories?
or should i stop trying to do so?
i find that it's difficult to get myself to want to do something or to stop wanting something.
also i find that my memories alter significantly on the topic of emotions. new information can actually change my memories of a previous experience. it would be nice to record the feeling as is, with no alterations. but i can be so moved in an instance, to later recall the memory with disgust. i think it's because i'm driven by meaning. as soon as i get updated with new information, it's as though i relive that previous moment with the information i now have and experience it as i now would.