Neri, Nora, and a Trip into Tangential Reality − 30 October, 2007
OK. It may have come up in conversation or another story. But I have a really amazing memory (at times).
It's great for memorizing useless facts.
Important stuff, on the other hand --- forget about it.
In physics class one day: I suddenly can't remember the name of the guy who invented the displacement principle. Takes a while, then it comes to me: Archimedes. Oh yeah, that guy!
On the other hand, there was this episode of Welcome Back Kotter where Epstein started smoking, and the other sweat hogs . . . . Get it? Complete plot of the episode, including the "smell o vision" joke, for some reason permanently stored in core memory.
Makes no sense.
So anyway, another consequence of this is an unsettling feeling that reality is as stable as the shifting sand dunes in a windblown desert.
There was a time when there was no such thing as TMJ. I had never seen, heard, experienced, spotted a reference to, or talked to anyone who'd ever mentioned it.
Then, all of a sudden, it appeared one week. There were reports on the news about it, daily, hourly. This was back in 1990, when I was going to school at UTC --- suddenly, half the chemistry students I knew were suffering from it. And worse, it was common knowledge. They talked as if this were some recurring bit of conversation. But as I said, I had never heard of it before.
So:
Either I completely missed every conversation and every reference to this disease for the first 22 years of my life, or . . . .
Well . . . .
Anyone here ever read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven?
If you haven't, check it out.
It's never anything extreme, for instance, one day I wake up and Mr. Haney from Green Acres was the president between Ford and Reagan. But it's always something very subtle, as if the universe is saying to me, "Hey, you're a scientist, figure this plot twist out! Plonk!!!"
Now, on September 30th, my wife and I went on a walk with our dogs, Neri and Nora. I've written about them here before. There's a picture of them below.
Neri is the lighter colored one, with a personality sort of like Laverne from Laverne & Shirley (or maybe Dottie in A League of Their Own).
Nora, well --- today, Nora's at one of the corners of my own personal Bermuda Triangle. She's the darker collie you see below: a very affectionate dog, but sort of skittish. Maybe she's the Shirley to Neri's Laverne.
See, a few weeks ago, my wife told me I had written a story about Neri, but not one about Nora. I looked. Hmm. I hadn't. So I got to work and evened the score with this article I posted a few weeks ago. All through the writing process, I kept getting the feeling I'd done this before.
Flash forward to today. Hey, there's the article I remembered! Right here.
If I were a comic book character, that's the panel where you would have seen the thought balloon over my head fill up with "?!?"
It was NOT there before.
Hey, is that Rod Serling I see, lurking in the shadows? No, no, it's just a picture of the park we walked in that day.
For now.
It's great for memorizing useless facts.
Important stuff, on the other hand --- forget about it.
In physics class one day: I suddenly can't remember the name of the guy who invented the displacement principle. Takes a while, then it comes to me: Archimedes. Oh yeah, that guy!
On the other hand, there was this episode of Welcome Back Kotter where Epstein started smoking, and the other sweat hogs . . . . Get it? Complete plot of the episode, including the "smell o vision" joke, for some reason permanently stored in core memory.
Makes no sense.
So anyway, another consequence of this is an unsettling feeling that reality is as stable as the shifting sand dunes in a windblown desert.
There was a time when there was no such thing as TMJ. I had never seen, heard, experienced, spotted a reference to, or talked to anyone who'd ever mentioned it.
Then, all of a sudden, it appeared one week. There were reports on the news about it, daily, hourly. This was back in 1990, when I was going to school at UTC --- suddenly, half the chemistry students I knew were suffering from it. And worse, it was common knowledge. They talked as if this were some recurring bit of conversation. But as I said, I had never heard of it before.
So:
Either I completely missed every conversation and every reference to this disease for the first 22 years of my life, or . . . .
Well . . . .
Anyone here ever read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven?
If you haven't, check it out.
It's never anything extreme, for instance, one day I wake up and Mr. Haney from Green Acres was the president between Ford and Reagan. But it's always something very subtle, as if the universe is saying to me, "Hey, you're a scientist, figure this plot twist out! Plonk!!!"
Now, on September 30th, my wife and I went on a walk with our dogs, Neri and Nora. I've written about them here before. There's a picture of them below.
Neri is the lighter colored one, with a personality sort of like Laverne from Laverne & Shirley (or maybe Dottie in A League of Their Own).
Nora, well --- today, Nora's at one of the corners of my own personal Bermuda Triangle. She's the darker collie you see below: a very affectionate dog, but sort of skittish. Maybe she's the Shirley to Neri's Laverne.
See, a few weeks ago, my wife told me I had written a story about Neri, but not one about Nora. I looked. Hmm. I hadn't. So I got to work and evened the score with this article I posted a few weeks ago. All through the writing process, I kept getting the feeling I'd done this before.
Flash forward to today. Hey, there's the article I remembered! Right here.
If I were a comic book character, that's the panel where you would have seen the thought balloon over my head fill up with "?!?"
It was NOT there before.
Hey, is that Rod Serling I see, lurking in the shadows? No, no, it's just a picture of the park we walked in that day.
For now.
collies
cofrin
Comments:
bmccosar (November 9, 2007. 02:03am)
Sorry, I have to say it . . . Dee dee dee dee Dee dee dee dee Dee dee dee dee . . . .
Bazookah 5 (November 9, 2007. 04:08pm)
Paaam pampamPAM. Do you have split personalities you think ? Or maybe you just bury some stuff because you already have enough information in store ? So when someone reminds you of something, you don't remember and have to go to the storage out back. I don't remember weeks or days, even some people I went to school with for years, every class together...but I remember the names of 300 kids, their brothers, sisters, cousins plus a whole library catalogue. Before that it was latin names of animals, and before it was actors, directors, visual images of the front of VHS tapes...Everything is stored, useful. Then when I start gathering something else, it gets flushed, buried. But when someone reminds me of a piece of it, I go look for it and there it is.
Maybe it's the same ? Or not. :-)
bmccosar (November 9, 2007. 09:34pm)
Nah, there's only me in here, 24/7. Sadly, I tend to think I'm right and the rest of the universe is wrong . . . . probably it's just a bad sector on the hard drive of my mind. I guess it needs its own term. It's the reverse of dejà vu . . . jamais vu? That inexplicable feeling of NOT having seen something before. On the other hand, Jamais Vu sounds like the name of some sort of reggae band.
Bazookah 5 (November 11, 2007. 05:55am)
lol...it could be a summer blockbuster starring Tom Cruise ! Jamais Vu, movie not to be remember !