My Whitewashed Memories

So Tarun has a theory about how memories are formed. Instead of using data storage the way a computer does, our brains use the activation pattern of their neurons. Imagine billions (?) of neurons, each firing at its own activity level. If you imagine each neuron's activation level as a point on a number line, you can have a huge conceptual space defined along billions of dimensions. At any moment, the point defined by all these parameters reflects our memories. Exactly how this happens isn't clear, but it must involve "feedback" in which inputs (our senses) propagate into the brain, cycling back around in a sort of loop. This sounds implausible until you remember just how big a billion-dimensional space can be.

However it works, my memory has a tendency to take on a sort of sentimental coloration. It's not that I forget the bad parts (I think - how would I know?), it's that the bad parts take on a kind of bittersweetness that makes them much more tolerable in retrospect. In reality I wasn't all that happy in Little Rock, but I can remember the look of the trees outside my room as if they had some poetic significance. I can remember the sunrises and the church music and the Backyard Burgers lemonade.

Right now I can remember sitting in our basement in Peoria, surfing the internet and listening to Wilco (which is what brought the memories back no doubt). The reason I was listening to Wilco, of course, is that I was miserable. And yet... I listen to the music now and it gives me this wonderful feeling of familiarity and comfort, and I look back with fondness on those hours in the basement.

Tarun's going to hate this next part, engaging as it does in the worst kind of pop folk psychology. Regardless, I sometimes think that my friendly relationship with the past (in stark contrast to my feelings about the future) stems from all the reading I did as a child. I'm at my most comfortable when I have no control whatsoever, but am an observer. I can accept my past as a sort of flawed narrative, the flaws in many cases adding considerable beauty and grace. The bubbles in champagne started as a flaw, as I like to remind myself. The future obviously requires quite a bit more of me.