Introspection chronicles 19| Memory and truth

Yesterday i was writing something, a memoir of sorts when a memory came to me. The picture i had was a vivid one - a hill made from some material that looks like cement mixed with sand. I had this sense that i used to stand on this mount as a kid and enjoy the view of open spaces in my world. I am sure this picture and the accompanying feeling is true but i cannot remember which part of my home that thing was, if i went there alone or with friends, where it is now and what it was even made of. It feels as if someone photoshopped my memory.

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_{pixabay:Tumisu}

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This is not the first time i have had to question what i remember. I think i might have written something about it here before, but i am too tired to check, to be sure. What makes this different is that while in other cases, i have remembered the memories over the years to be true until someone contradicted me, this memory has not been in my head forever. I have not thought of this mound of cement like thingy as far as i can remember. You see the irony there? How can i be sure that i have not remembered it before?

It is this that led to the lengthy poem i had written some hours ago which i titled Remembering. I consider memory to be one of the custodian of my identity, my story. Without my memory, as someone who finds expression in the written word, someone who hopes to one day tell his story in the best way possible, i would be lost. If i decide to write a story of my life, would i be telling the truth or would i be faced with the inability to defend what i had written.

While i was writing the aforementioned memoir, i remembered another incident but unlike the one mentioned above, this one which i will not state here was not just vivid but i could remember the surrounding setting, who i was with and what led to it. Although the former incident would be older than this one in terms of the when, i don't see a reason why i should not remember it. After all, there are incidents i remember from my childhood that are far older than this one.

The human brain is a complex organ. I have blacked out, high on something (don't ask me) and came to, unknowing. I have listened to people tell me what i had done while in that blacked out state and i have taken their words as true. In some cases, i have remembered their words as images rather than as speech as if i actually witnessed what they saw me do. Were their version of the event true? I have no reference to back it up but my hippocampus has saved it as a memory.

Another weirdness in my head is my relationship with dreams and dejá vu. I dream and remember my dreams sometimes but most times, i either do not dream or i forget them as soon as my eyes flicker open. There are times, when i struggle to cling to the memory of a dream even as it leaves me and some days i get lucky and a single strand of my dream follows me into the waking world. Now this is a normal thing, i believe. What makes it weird is when a dream comes true.

Now this part, i am not 100% sure of but i have come to suspect strongly that most of the dejá vu i experience are dreams happening in real time. They can be likened to precognition. Now these events that feel so strongly like i have done or said it before are never important. They are on an average something mundane like say watching a tv show and hearing someone say something and i'd be like i have heard that before in this same manner, in that same voice. Once in a while, i remember the dream and i say yes this it, this is where i first heard it. Does this justify anything? It could still be my mind playing tricks on me - a manipulation of my memory.

The last line above is a strong possibility because i had an interesting experience one time. That night, i was half asleep in my father's sitting room. You know that state of sleep that seem like you are asleep but you are not? Well the tv was on as i dozed away. Suddenly i heard a male voice calling out to a woman, begging in the most wretched of voices. The pain in the man's voice and the woman's reply haunted me awake. I turned around confused, sure it was the tv but it wasn't. The tv was showing something entirely unrelated to what i just heard. It was a dream, or was God sending me a vision? You would laugh yes? But you would not have found it funny if you were in my shoes at 1 am in the morning, hearing weird voices.

For days, i pondered this dream of mine. I even wrote a poem on it, to show how haunting it was. One ordinary afternoon, walking into the sitting room, i met the tail end of a movie advert and behold it was my haunting dream. The voices and the words tallied. Because i knew too much as i was not fully asleep, i could not call it dejá vu. My brain had fused an advert with my mental state and in the process given me the feeling that it was a dream. What if I had been fully asleep when it happened and it had taken maybe a month for me to come across the movie advert, would I have called it dejá vu?

It is scary to be unable to trust your memory. This is not about forgetting rather it is about remembering right. It is possible or so i have read that memory undergoes deterioration with time, as we age, thus our memories of our first love, our first job is usually not as true and as clear as we think. Over time, emotions, other relationships or jobs with their own issues have coloured that memory and as such it has taken a more different aspect from the truth.

This worry is one of the reasons why writing like any other art that create images is important to me. It is the only way that i know of to back up the events of life in such a manner that it does not erode with time. Photography, cinematography, drawing, dance, singing, drama - these are storehouses of memory besides writing. They are the media through which countless stories are told and no matter how untrue or unsure the memory may be, these media tell a universal story, a universal truth.

One day, i may have a reason to write my memoirs, maybe to dissuade my offsprings, if any, from speculating as to the kind of person i was. It would be interesting in its own way, i am sure but if it would be completely true, that i cannot guarantee. I do know that it would have universal truths within its pages and that i will not be sympathetic with my person. Meanwhile, given the earliness of the day and the fact that i have not been sleeping fine, i am going to turn away from this and ruminate on a hill made of a cement like substance that may or may not have been a part of my childhood years. Good morning

©warpedpoetic, 2019.