Quotes Tagged "memory"
Ordinarily, when he thought back upon those days, let alone upon his student years and the Bamboo Grove, it had always been as if he were gazing from a cool, dull room out into broad, brightly sunlit landscapes, into the irrevocable past, the paradise of memory. Such recollections had always been, even when they were free of sadness, a vision of things remote and different, separated from the prosaic present by a mysterious festiveness. But now, on this bright and cheerful September afternoon, with the strong greens and browns all around him and the ethereal, gently misted tones of blues verging into violet in the distance, as he trudged along at an easy pace, with frequent pauses to look about him, that walking tour of so long ago did not seem a distant paradise cut off from a resigned present. rather his present journey was the same as that of the past, the present Joseph Knecht was close as a brother to the Knecht of those days. Everything was new again, mysterious, promising; all that had been could recur, and many new things as well. It was long, long since he had looked out upon the day and the world and seen them as so unburdened, so beautiful and innocent. The happiness of freedom, of commanding his own destiny, flooded through him like a strong drink. How long it was since he had last had this feeling, last entertained this lovely and rapturous illusion.
...collective memory is unevenly distributed: some people have a rich and deep resource, for others it is minimal. A matter of education, and also of inclination. But however minimal, however threadbare, it is ballast of a kind. We all need that seven-eighths of the iceberg, the ballast of the past, a general past, the place from which we came. That is why history should be taught in school, to all children, as much of it as possible. If you have no sense of the past, no access to the historical narrative, you are afloat, untethered; you cannot see yourself as a part of the narrative, you cannot place yourself within a context. You will not have an understanding of time, and a respect for memory and its subtle victory over the remorselessness of time.
Only the passage of time ultimately separates each generation. Our humanity remains stalwartly impervious to political manipulations and to the social, culture and economic tidings that each generation must etch out a living. Our sense of time past, present and future is the common denominator that each generation shares because time refuses to standstill for mere human beings. Time cannot be ignored or shunted, but must be respected for the indomitable power that its relentless pressure applies upon each of us. The unyielding power of time sneers at each of us regardless of our race, religion, creed, nationality, gender, age, or sexual orientation. Potency of time is irreducible, it is irreversible, and it is inerasable. Through the periscope of memory, we can dice snippets of time’s atoms into infinitesimal pictures of mere moments; we can harness select prized memories to build a molecular mind’s magical playhouse. The capacity of the human mind for memory enables people to preserve, retain, and subsequently recall knowledge, information, and experience. Replaying snapshots of the past enables us to comprehend the magnitude of the present and take account of the inevitability of our future.
And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running. Young Peter props up on his elbows, ambushed by a memory from the future. The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens beneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room. […] All he wants to do forever is to take the magnificent timepiece apart and put its meshed gears back together again. To recover that feeling of being clear, present, here, various and vibrant, as huge and noble as an outer planet.
