Today, if I write it down, it's because I remember it. The autumn I have is the autumn I have lost.Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
There are rare times when I read a sentence that resonates so strongly within me that it sends my thoughts bouncing about excitedly: "of course, of course!" Aren't all our lives a collection of memories, a gathering of stories always in flux?
In his The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) poetically wanders through life, noting small events with beautiful prose. In short fragments he writes his thoughts and his belief that he does not truly exist, or that he exists as a multitude of personalities. "I realized...that I am no one." When I first read these words a year ago, I found them so disturbing that I did not continue reading, but now they feel so true.
The quote about remembering took me back to the many times I gave lectures on my work, how I spent time arranging slides, gathering quotes, working out an arc for my narrative. Then one year I realized that I had been leaving out an entire body of work because it didn't fit in to the story I'd been telling, so I began to tell it a different way. A life consists of thoughts, of shifting memories.
In his The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) poetically wanders through life, noting small events with beautiful prose. In short fragments he writes his thoughts and his belief that he does not truly exist, or that he exists as a multitude of personalities. "I realized...that I am no one." When I first read these words a year ago, I found them so disturbing that I did not continue reading, but now they feel so true.
The quote about remembering took me back to the many times I gave lectures on my work, how I spent time arranging slides, gathering quotes, working out an arc for my narrative. Then one year I realized that I had been leaving out an entire body of work because it didn't fit in to the story I'd been telling, so I began to tell it a different way. A life consists of thoughts, of shifting memories.
Lovely, Altoon, shifting memories, some slipping deeper than reachable. I wonder if I will remember Fernando Pessoa to look up his book later...
ReplyDeleteThis post reminds me of a great Radiolab episode on memory.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/
thanks, Maggie. Thanks Rob for the link; I'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteSelf, story, memory -- that's elusive stuff! Why do we sometimes feel so solid? I guess because we keep walking around in the same bodies. We also have a way of imagining our lives and bodies as discrete and autonomous, which is such an illusion, since we are not viable without help in both directions, from our intestinal symbionts and our families and communities...I don't mind this. It seems good, actually. I must be getting old.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susan, for your response, and your reminder of our little body helpers. It does seem good to me too that we are not solid entities. Some of these thoughts have come to me because I've been reading a little bit about Buddhist philosophy, in which the ego is an illusion. I do think that time and aging make us feel more fluid.
ReplyDeleteAging helps us let go of things we hold too close.
ReplyDeletejohn, that's an ideal, to be able to get to the point of a non-attachment. I hope it gets easier.
ReplyDelete