When I was 12 years old, I was laying in bed thinking about whatever it was I was thinking about. As I was thinking about whatever it was I was thinking about, the thing I was thinking about required an image of a person I knew. I proceeded to have their face in my mind, but after a little while something happened. Something was off. The image of their face was in my mind for a little too long, enough so that it wasn't exactly what I thought they looked like. I couldn't picture the shape of the nose. I couldn't see how far away the eyes were from each other.
Chin?
Ears?
Mouth?
What was happening? What exactly did they look like??
And the more I tried to picture their face, the more it just looked like a jumbled mess. I was now worried, thinking that maybe I will never be able to picture someone without a photo of them in front of me. It scared me. What am I without my memory??
I started getting truly worried, so I went downstairs to my parents, who were sitting in the kitchen. I explained to them as best I could what was happening in my mind. As I talked, I continued to try to piece together the face, only to find it more of a muddle than before. I started crying. Neither of my parents knew what to say to me, except to relax and stop thinking about it for a while. I went upstairs, back to bed, never having defeated my own memories.
Still to this day, I can't say that when I close my eyes I can picture a face in it's fully formed state, but I learned that night that some things don't need to be remembered in the way other things do. Sometimes the more you think about things, the less clear they become.
- Lee (while listening to In A Priest Driven Ambulance by The Flaming Lips)
Yeah I see what you mean. It's like when you're talking to someone and you think, "shit, where do I look when I'm talking to them, or them talking to me, left eye... right eye... in between?". When you're not thinking about where you're looking at someone when your talking with them, you just... well you just look at them. Focusing on it too much fucks it up.
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....and when it comes to memory, that which is visual is never really captured/remembered as it was. only memories of the heart remain pure. for instance, if i think of my friend Angela who died two years ago, i can see a representation of what her face looked like and know it's her i am "seeing" in my mind, but just like you said Lee it has those blury edges, it's not 100% pure. but if i think of Angela, the person, the soul and think of a moment in time we shared, THAT is still VERY clear and very real.
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