An Alchemy of Mind

Scribner Book Company

Chapter One

What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight. - Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Like tiny islands on the horizon, they canvanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather,their coral gradually erodes, pickled by saltand heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life.Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees.Others crawl with pirates and reptiles.Together, they connect a self with the mainlandand society. Plot their trail and a mercurialpast becomes visible.

Memories feel geological in their repose, solidand true, the bedrock of consciousness. They mayinclude knowing that it's hard to lead a cowdown steps, or how the indri-indri of Madagascargot its name, or the time you accidentallygrabbed a strange man's hand in a crowd(thinking it was your friend's), or how you felthitting a home run in Little League, or yourfirst car (a used VW that rattled like an olddinette set), or a grisly murder you just readabout that made you rethink capital punishment,or an unconscious detailed operating guide tothe body that manages each cell's tiny factory.

Memories inform our actions, keep us company,and give us our noisy, ever-chattering sense ofself. Because we're moody giants, every day wesubtly revise who we think we are. Part of theandroid's tragedy in the Ridley Scott film BladeRunner is that he possesses a long,self-defining chain of memories. Though ruthlessand lacking empathy, and technically not aperson, he can remember. Played by Rutger Hauer,he contains a self who witnessed marvels onEarth and Mars and fears losing his uniquemental jazz in death.

Without memories we wouldn't know who we are,how we once were, who we'd like to be in thememorable future. We are the sum of ourmemories. They provide a continuous privatesense of one's self. Change your memory and youchange your identity. Then shouldn't we try tobank good memories, ones that will define us aswe wish to be? I'm surprised by how many peopledo just that. Even tour companies advertise:"Bring home wonderful memories." Here we are, ahappy family taking a Disney cruise, documentedon film. But memory isn't like a camcorder,computer, or storage bin. It's more restless,more creative, and it's not one of anything.Each memory is a plural event, an ensemble ofsynchronized neurons, some side by side, othersrelatively far apart.

Everyone will always remember where they were onSeptember 11, 2001, or when men first walked onthe moon. Shared memories bind us to loved ones,neighbors, our contemporaries. The sort ofmemory I'm talking about now isn't essential forsurvival, and yet it pleases us, it enricheseveryday life. So couples relive romanticmemories, families watch home movies, andfriends "catch up" with each other, as ifthey've lagged behind on a trail. Sifting memoryfor saliences to report, they reveal how vitalpieces of their identity have changed. Aging, wetailor memories to fit our evolving silhouette,and as life's vocabulary changes, memorieschange to fathom the new order. Lose yourmemory, and you may drift in an alien world.

Mind you, memories are kidnappable. Radio,television, and the print media purvey sharednational memories that can usurp a personalpast. All the why's can change. A world ofartificial memory, as the British neuroscientistSteven Rose points out, "means that whereas allliving species have a past, only humans have ahistory." And, at that, it tends to be thehistory of the well to do. Thanks to thecompound eye of the media, millions of peopleare spoon-fed the same images, slogans, history,myths. What happens to individual memories then?Some rebels refuse that programming, or theyprefer their own group's ideologies. But mostpeople do adopt values and interpretations ofevents from the media, their neighbors, or afavorite tyrant. Official history changes witheach era's values, which can sometimes beperverse, what Jung described as a large-scalepsychic ailment. "An epoch," he said, in ModernMan in Search of a Soul, "is like an individual;it has its own limitations of conscious outlook,and therefore requires a compensatoryadjustment ... that which everyone blindly cravesand expects - whether this attainment resultsin good or evil, the healing of an epoch or itsdestruction." Still, though no one is an island,most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't makesense without personal memories pinned likebutterflies against the velvet backdrop ofsocial history.

Scientists sometimes talk about "flashbulb"memories so intense they instantly brand themind. Photography provided something different:push-button memories that revolutionized oursense of self and family, which we oftenremember in eye-gulps, as snapshots. WaltWhitman, in his journals, jotted down the nameof each of his lovers and sometimes what theydid for a living, as though he might one dayforget his moments of loving and being loved.But I think he would have preferred photographsof those dear ones to help recall the liquidmosaic of each face.

Picture yourself younger, and what image forms?Most likely it's a static image, a snapshotsomeone took. Memories can pile up and becomemind clutter; it's easier to store them inalbums. We remember our poses. Each photographis a magic lamp rubbed by the mind. When we'rein the mood, we can savor a photograph whilesensations burst free. Right now, for example,I'm holding a photograph of a pungent kingpenguin rookery in Antarctica, and I rememberthe noisy clamor like a combination of harmonicaand oncoming train. I remember how inhalingglacial cold felt like pulling a scarf throughmy nostrils. I remember that, in such thin air,glare became a color.

Whenever we look at a photo, we add nuances, andthat inevitably edits it. It may pale. It mayacquire a thick lacquer of emotion. The nextsentence may sound a little bizarre becauseEnglish grammar isn't congenial to time mirages,however: photographs tell us who we now think weonce were. Photography, like most art, storesmoments of heightened emotion and awareness likesmall pieces of neutron star. Years later, amemory's color-rodeo may have faded, or mayremain vivid enough to make the pulse buckagain. Each response adds another layer untilthe memory is encrusted with new feelings, belowwhich the original event evaporates. Imagine ajeweled knife. First you change the handle, thenyou change the blade. Is it the same knife?

We tend to think of memories as monuments weonce forged and may find intact beneath theweedy growth of years. But, in a real sense,memories are tied to and describe the present.Formed in an idiosyncratic way when theyhappened, they're also true to the moment ofrecall, including how you feel, all you'veexperienced, and new values, passions, andvulnerability. One never steps into the samestream of consciousness twice. All the mischiefand mayhem of a life influences how one restylesa memory.

A memory is more atmospheric than accurate, morean evolving fiction than a sacred text. Andthank heavens. If rude, shameful, or brutalmemories can't be expunged, they can at least bediluted. So is nothing permanent and fixed inlife? By definition life is a fickle noun, anevent in progress. Still, we cling tophilosophical railings, religious icons, pillarsof belief. We forget on purpose that Earth isrolling at 1,000 miles an hour, and, at the sametime, falling elliptically around our sun, whilethe sun is swinging through the Milky Way, andthe Milky Way migrating along with countlessother galaxies in a universe about 13.7 billionyears old. An event is such a little piece oftime and space, leaving only a mindglow behindlike the tail of a shooting star. For lack of abetter word, we call that scintillation memory.

Continues...
Excerpted from An Alchemy of Mindby Diane Ackerman Copyright ©2005 by Diane Ackerman. Excerpted by permission.
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