Memory is a big story in my life. If you work with language, you juggle with language, your own and any others you might have picked up, you are constantly scouring for words and expressions from the past, all drenched with the lived life of the time.. I no longer keep a diary of any sort, electronic or physical, with the intention of keeping my memory active. Is my memory less good because I am older and have more in the box to sort through when I look for something? Some words I block on. When I look for them I must panic internally and they just don’t come. They tend to be abstract words. For example: autistic; empiricism; casuistry; placebo. I have been trying to remember these words for years. When I look for them I suddenly get lost in an little internal labyrinth. I tend to remember the rhythms of words or quotes without recalling the words themselves. I have what you might call a musical memory. My partner has a photographic memory. She sees something and retains the picture in her mind’s eye However, she will forget something I say from one moment to the next. This could be because I am am easily forgotten Leave the door open, I say. All right, she says. Three seconds later she will slam it. She also has a poor emotional memory. She cannot recall how bad her stomach acid was after an argument. Her brain eradicates all memory of a difficult experience. You are what you remember, which means that you are forever being eroded and chipped at. In the end all your angles are ground down and you resemble a smooth stone like all the other smooth stones on the landscape.

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