memory-loss

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

This woman had no idea who I was. She has no idea I was once a smoker, was thrown out of boarding school twice and a certified rebel with strong opinions. To her, I was new, fresh, immaculate to the bone. This was all strangely wonderful.

My mother had a way of accessing the energy of the people around her. There was no need to know their name, who they were or how she knew them. She didn__ recognize their surface. She went much deeper.

And since we don__ just forget things because they don__ matter but also forget things because they matter too much because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint's, it__ no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, to be a willful excursion into mythomania

Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man__ memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.

Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was__o strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends__lbeit more by circumstance than by choice__e understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed__nd thereby strained__y comprehensibility.

Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated than simply forgetting your name. It's also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you'll never have to live without. It's meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impression.

But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing?

There are edges around the black and every now and then a flash of color streaks out of the gray. But I can never really grasp any of the slivers of memories that emerge.

The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Memory loss is the key to human reproduction. If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn__ go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn__ ever do it twice.

The old me is sure making things difficult for the current me.

My brain tends to take the scenic route. Things come to the forefront of my mind sooner or later, it just takes time.

Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years__he details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.

When you don't grasp something or remember something, I think your mind at last says, "Okay," and part of it accepts this. In the end your mind gets to welcome that deadening. that's what I believe anyway. Half of our memoryloss is by choice.

Nostalgia has a way of blocking the reality of the past.

We are often given pills or fluids to help remedy illness, yet little has been taught to us about the power of smell to do the exact same thing. It is known that the scent of fresh rosemary increases memory, but this cure for memory loss is not divulged by doctors to help the elderly. I also know that the most effective use of the blue lotus flower is not from its dilution with wine or tea _ but from its scent. To really maximize the positive effects of the blue lily (or the pink lotus), it must be sniffed within minutes of plucking. This is why it is frequently shown being sniffed by my ancient ancestors on the walls of temples and on papyrus. Even countries across the Orient share the same imagery. The sacred lotus not only creates a relaxing sensation of euphoria, and increases vibrations of the heart, but also triggers genetic memory - and good memory with an awakened heart ushers wisdom.

Love is the only memory one never loses, Isaac._ His father had said. __ecause even if one loses his mind the memory always remains in the heart.