What is human memory?" Manning asked. He gazed at the air as he spoke, as if lecturing an invisible audience - as perhaps he was. "It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or a tape. It is more like a story-telling machine. Sensory information is broken down into shards of perception, which are broken down again to be stored as memory fragments. And at night, as the body rests, these fragments are brought out from storage, reassembled and replayed. Each run-through etches them deeper into the brain's neural structure. And each time a memory is rehearsed or recalled it is elaborated. We may add a little, lose a little, tinker with the logic, fill in sections that have faded, perhaps even conflate disparate events.In extreme cases, we refer to this as confabulation. The brain creates and recreates the past, producing, in the end, a version of events that may bear little resemblance to what actually occurred. To first order, I believe it's true to say that everything I remember is false
Arthur C. Clarke in The Light of Other Days
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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Forgotten Scar
The day his mark faded
From its place upon my skin
His hold on me was lifted
The love my heart once bore for him
And the pain my mind told me his memory brought
Along with all the marks he left upon my body
Faded to a distant memory
Now and forever gone
He is nothing to me
Nothing
Now he is only
A faded and forgotten scar
In the memory of my heart
poem by DiAnne Douglass
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Frammento
A fragment is something incomplete
Something broken-off, severed,
Detached, segregated,
A fragment of a conversation,
Extant fragments of an ancient
Document written on stone,
A fragment of my poetry,
How
do
i
say
it?
………………………………….
Some fragments of myself
Missing some fragments of
Myself hidden, and you will
Not find them, too many fragments
like lice in a native woman's
hair spreading on her head
I place them where
You cannot find them because
You presume too much
To know me to love me,
Along this line, so many parts
are detached, perhaps my navel
my mole, my thumb
my right ear, my left eye
So many parts severed, perhaps
My head from my heart
my mind from my soul
my past from my future
Some extant fragments of
My past self, written on some
Stones still unturned, yes
I have pretended so much
And you cannot detect
Which is true from false
i have become so many parts
of myself, now in the last hours
fragmented
wanting to be whole again..
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Making Love With Memories
You poked my blurring eye,
Let me lift your mushy breast.
We aged onwards
While you stroked flaccidity –
Recalling decades of
Blood-gorged coming, shuddering to boot.
I kissed a venerable mouth
Crammed with falsities –
Once brilliant keys
Guarded by crimson lips
Washed by a sensual tongue.
And so we writhed in wrinkles,
Tiring effort, and
Memories.
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010
Memory memory memory memory memory
Memory memory memory memory memory
Memory memory memory memory memory
Memory memory memory memory memory
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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IF you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book.
Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time
Submitted by Catalin Popescu
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The Fragments Of My Poetry
The fragments of my poetry
Mirror the tempests green
The billows black and frothing
In my breast.
The fragments of my poetry
Are chromosomes littered randomly
But from them the body of poetry
Can rise.
The fragments of my poetry
Are like the broken mirror:
That I broke silently -
My heart is broken.
poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
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Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
quote by Lewis B. Smedes
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
quote by Grandma Moses
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Come As You Are (LP Version)
Come As You Are"
Come, as you are. As you were.
As I want you to be. As a friend.
As a friend. As an old enemy. Take your time.
Hurry up. The choice is yours. Don't be late.
Take a rest. As a friend. As a old memory, memory, memory, memory.
Come. Dowsed in mud. Soaked in bleach.
As I want you to be. As a trend. As a friend.
As an old memory, memory, memory, memory.
And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.
Memory, memory, memory, memory (don't have a gun).
And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun. Memory, memory...
song performed by by Nirvana
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A strange thing is memory, and hope one looks backward, and the other forward one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
quote by Anna Mary Robertson Moses
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The memory river
The memory river painting all of our memories *
Together we passed all of heart solitude*
Followed swift the life flow*
Hoped we love never death*
Constant we needs wrote the story*
The memory river was the picture we have long hopes*
Where all followed the lines of the Lord*
We said was together we have the sorrow*
We said was broken become two*
I'still remember we have ever sitting near in the silent river of silence*
I'still remember we have conscience crying*
Your conscience always said*
Where i'saw sincere from my heart eyes*
The memory river flowed heade the area ocean*
The memory river never dry forevermore*
I'need we said like the river memory*
Never dry we love forevermore*
My Past
I can never let go of my past because my past has marked me
Every time I look down
Every time I look over
There is my past
The notches
The bold the non-mistakable scars
…the scars
My past
Each and every one has a story
Each and every one has a memory
Each and every one has brought tears to my eyes
For no story nor memory are of happiness, triumph, or glory
No, they are of fear, anxiety, self-hatred, paranoia, and loneliness
I can never let go of my past because my past will always be part of me
poem by Scarlet Mo Chroi
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A poem's prehistory
When the poem has at last
been brought to birth,
I rest, or stand, as both proud parents do,
blessed by the loving bed;
but I love too, the memory
of what brought being to this poem:
the seeming insignificant events of the day,
that neighboured with some memory;
that chimed with books half read;
which joined half-thoughts together like new-stringed white pearls,
and then spoke in some wordless tongue
and mental paintings without form
somewhere in mind;
and behind it all
the briefest flashes of the workings of the world…
and wonder; awe.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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What I Am To You
you want to forget me, brush me aside like some thing that you have no use of,
like a broken comb
or a shampoo wrapper
or a used toothpaste, and for all the other reasons that you may conceive
i perfectly understand it
the words we use shall tell exactly what logic wants us to portray
a broken monument
shattered pieces of glass
a stone thrown away
a used clothing where my smell may shout a very sweet memory
of us
a perfume that someone sprayed on the body
a body
a hand
a nose
lips and face and caressing fingers, the fate of all these shall lie
on the judgment of the brain
we tell them to go away we tell them to hide themselves
to forget
but look at them
they all refuse
they are still you and forgetting seems to be illogical
they have become some parts of you
and destroying them has become impossible
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Glass Memory (Life Poem)
Diamonds of shattered glass sparkle in sunlight,
Grey cobbles contain a memory of past violence,
Was it blood and bone remnants of a car crash,
Or a vodka toast, of a long night of celebration?
Evidence of these past events a glass memory of
Unrecorded pictures, as my feet crunch through,
A brittle history of a Saturday night in Auckland.
poem by Ian Beckett
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Tropical Recollection
The crashing of the glass
Shards of memory scattered throughout
Whilst ominous gusts of terror besiege,
Convincing the upends have come
Bellowing into disabled blue eyes,
Blurred and blinded through battles of time
The dark deep dread creeps in
Shards of memory scattered throughout
Thoughts cloud in withdrawal
A relinquishing storm of all form, all peril
Void as a dream, void of sanity
Shards of memory scattered throughout
We Can’t Go Back
I wonder whatever became of such and such
It’s too many years since we’ve all been in touch
In our youthful naivety we were innocently un-clever
Assuming our ‘then’ would be our ‘now’ and ‘then’ forever
Our roads of life we traveled turned in all directions
Those traveled stops are now has-been recollections
We sometime recall fondly much of the past
The unfortunate facts are, ‘ the past just doesn’t last’
Yesterdays are history stored in our memory bins
Recalling good and bad times, all through thick and thins
A memory is engraved in our brain like a computer data track
‘But the past just doesn’t last’ and ‘We can’t go back’
poem by Stanley Cooper
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A Return To Youth
Oh to be able to return to my youth
where everything was so new,
never a trouble to think about,
never a trouble to brew.
But youth is gone so quick, so fast.
It cannot last you know.
Only the memory of it can stay.
The memory won't let go.
I remember the tastes, the smells, the sights
as if it were yesterday.
They are most precious and dear to me
as now my hair turns gray.
Please let my brain keep pace with me.
Don't ever let it leave.
For I will lose my youth to the past,
never again to receive
the feeling that comes to only the young.
Oh please let me recall
all of those days that belong to me
from when I was so small.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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Thank You for the Memory
My body tingles as I lay there still feeling your body wrapped around mine
I close my eyes and notice that there is nothing I can do but dream
For you have left me here with nothing but a memory
A memory of what we had what we were
A memory of nothing more at this time nothing to have to look forward to
My heart aches as I open my eyes and turn to see nothing but an empty bed
The scent of you makes me wonder what could have been
It makes me wonder what went so wrong
We had something that could never be replaced and not it has vanished right before my eyes
You think that the memory will be nothing more than a picture
They say “A memory will last a life time”
I say “A memory will only last a life time as long as you can keep it alive inside of your heart”
There is one thing that should be said
Thank You for the memory that will last me a lifetime of joy
~*Tosha*~
poem by Darkness Falls
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I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
quote by Margaret Mitchell
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Memory and Oblivion
When all is lost, there is still a memory
From which a new city can be built in a new world.
Those with memory will be wealthy.
Oblivion cures the old wounds, and you must agree,
There is only the past and the future on the path;
When all is lost, there is still a memory.
Memory will save oblivion from a bad reverie;
When the new city is built, it will be an abode,
Bestowed by those with memory to make others wealthy.
Before the temple, in the middle of the city,
Keepers of the fire all abided.
When all is lost, there is still a memory.
Fire will be born from night to be
New light when all knowledge is swallowed
And those with memory will be wealthy.
A new rose will bloom from the dark sea,
A city revived from memory and abroad;
When all is but a memory, there is still memory.
Those with memory will be wealthy.
poem by Dejan Stojanovic
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