Yesterday, a friend mentioned a student of his who once began writing in a notebook - specifically, writing everything that needed to be said that day in the event he didn't have another. At first, that sounds noble and smart, however, it also seems fatally overwhelming. I try to do that while on travel - to record everything that I saw or that happened (plus my reaction) in my travel journals. But it takes me hours every night to record the day's adventures. Usually I reach critical mass after about five days, and I start leaving big gaps when I save the writing for the next day... and for the next... I tried to stave this off on my last trip by at least making short notes on the days I didn't feel like writing full entries, so I wouldn't later forget what to write. I had the intention of synthesizing my quick notes into longer writings, but here I am, four months later, with just a random collection of notes. And this isn't limited to my travel journals. I have loads of notebooks and envelopes and glove compartments full of scribblings and cryptic notes, filed away for later development. But I rarely revisit them. And when I do, it's never to write them into something more formal; it's more like visiting a museum of me, in which there are no pieces to display - all that's there are the curator's notes on the wall.
Why this drive to record all detail? It's part of my personality, I suppose. Like Didion, I want to remember what it was to be me at that time and place. And I have this compulsion to record every detail - because without the context, the significance of a particular thought is sadly diminished. I am decidedly unabridged. I often give up telling stories because I can't adequately Cliffs-Notes it for others to easily digest. For my audience to understand an event, I have to convey every minute detail and most of the back-story. A six-sentence story for another person is a six-minute yarn for me.
I leaf through these notebooks and rediscover these fragments of memory that had been lost to time. Maybe I'm the only one who cares, in which case, why am I writing all this detail for myself to enjoy later? Or, I'm making field notes in some experiment, and eventually, I will be able to see patterns and draw conclusions and will be glad to have a rich collection of data. I want everyone to understand the complexity of a situation. Apparently, this extends to my future self, with how I write in my notebook. Presumably, my notes are only for me, but I still often feel like I write for an audience outside my head. And here, on this blog, I have a faceless audience for whom I am writing - which perhaps provides the impetus to bring all those scrawled scraps of memory into some cohesive work. But does someone else actually need to read it for it to have worth? Would I have any internal motivation to collect notes into something coherent if I didn't have an audience? Probably not.
Perhaps the volume of detail I feel compelled to record is to stave off the natural paring and preparation of information for long-term storage. The brain distills things down into a small remnant of memory, and there's no predicting what that will be. Zoe Heller, through a character in her novel Notes on a Scandal, says this of memory-crafting:
I keep staring at things, willing myself to remember them: the faded blue dressing gown that Sheba is always leaving draped across the sofa; the antique Moroccan tiles in the kitchen; the velvet-clad hangers in the closets. Of course, memory is not really as obedient a faculty as that. You can't consciously decide what is going to adhere. Certain things may strike you at the time as memorable, but memory only laughs at your presumption. 'Oh, I'm never going to forget this,' you say to yourself when you visit the Sacre-Coeur at sunset. And years later, when you try to summon up an image of the Sacre-Coeur, it's as cold an abstract as if you'd only ever seen it on a postcard. If anything unlocks the memory of this house for me, years from now, it will be something - some tiny, atmospheric fragment - of which I'm not even aware at the moment. I know this, and yet I still persist in making my little inventory, trying to nail down my recollections.
I tend to remember overtones, not details. My reaction to a situation, not the specifics of the situation itself. How people say something, not the words they say. How I feel about something, not the something. This is also why I'm terrible at describing plots of stories or films - all I can remember is my overall impression, or what I was thinking at the time.
It's difficult enough to craft one's own memories; it has to be impossible to manufacture one's own legacy. Sam Beam implores a longtime love to remember him in a very specific way. I am fascinated by things that others remember. Reminiscing about grad school with a friend last weekend, she recounted a story about the two of us to her son. On my own, I never would have remembered the situation she described, but of course I knew it once she mentioned it. It was neither good nor bad, but of all the possible memories of us, it's interesting that that particular incident is part of her inventory. I am loathe to say I want to control what others think of me, but I will admit I want that impression to be accurate. It bothers me greatly when people misinterpret me. As in the song, can we really instruct someone to remember us in some way, or, for that matter, even maintain the same catalog of memories? Should we even care that different curators organize the collection differently - the prized acquisitions in our own exhibits are relegated to an out-of-the-way room in someone else's. I wonder whether others would be as surprised (as I am at theirs) at my memories of them, and what triggers them.
I certainly want to be remembered fondly for specific events. I certainly want to be remembered seldomly for the times when I was not the best version of myself. I edit my own memories over and over, leaving a tight, streamlined work that pleases me. Do others do the same? I own several pair of rose-colored glasses - ever the idealist, I usually look back on things and see the good. Even in a current situation, one in which I really want to see and remember the bad because I think it will make it easier to let go later, I am having a really difficult time doing so. Almost as if the harder I try, the stronger the good shines; the rosier things crowd everything else out of view.
For someone who teaches a laboratory science, I sure have no clear need for objective accuracy.
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