Scrolling Memories Quotes

We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas--stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.

Life’s most precious moments are not all loud or uproarious. Silence and stillness has its own virtues.

Time has a different meaning for me, and these events that seem so monumental in the moment will one day be nothing more than a line in a scroll. These humans are but letters to be inked into history. A hundred years from now, I will be free. I will have forgotten their names and faces, and the struggles they have will not matter. Time has a way of burying things, shifting like the desert and swallowing entire civilizations, erasing them from map and memory. Always, in the end, everything returns to dust.

I miss you because memory is a kind editor. The past is a long scroll and in it is the story of us, told with gentle metaphor, and words that bring you back and back, even as you lie there, lying.

Every unpleasant worldly experience in life exposes our sensitive nervous systems to painful phenomena. Despite all the beer commercial advertisement slogans urging us to live with gusto, life is unavoidably painful. Life is a battering ram that inflicts trauma upon human beings. People blunt the traumatic force of enduring a lifetime of pain, fearfulness, and unremitted anguish and boredom with religion, sex, booze, drugs, fantasy, and other indulgent acts and forms acts of escapism.

5 1/2 centuries after its 1.0 release, the book is a surprisingly robust piece of information technology. Sure, its memory is relatively tiny--one novel adds up to less than a megabyte. But it doesn't need charging, and it never crashes. Its interface is rapidly and intuitively navigable. The scroll never stood a chance.

Examination of our past is never time-wasting. Reverberations from the past provide learning rubrics for living today.

We cannot achieve personal enlightenment – a clarification of our souls – until we cease deluding ourselves. We must accept that life includes witnessing and personally experiencing pain.

Childhood introduces children to the wounds of the world.

Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion; it entails the act of recalling complicated memories of bygone days.

There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them. So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone. Though they never disappeared completely, of course.

Tessa!” Magnus said again, marveling. “Aren’t you unexpected. And uninvited.” Tessa sat and sipped her tea, looking perfectly composed. Since she was one of Magnus’s dearest and oldest friends, he felt it would be nice if she looked even slightly apologetic. She did not. “You told me once that you would not forgive me if I didn’t drop by whenever I found myself in the same city as you.” “I would have forgiven you,” Magnus said with conviction. “I would have thanked you.” Tessa glanced Alec’s way. Alec was blushing. The ends of Tessa’s lips curled up, but she was kind and hid her smile behind her teacup. “Call it even,” said Tessa. “You once walked in on me in an embarrassing situation with a gentleman in a mountain fortress, after all.” Her half-concealed smile flickered. She looked again at Alec, who had inherited his coloring from Shadowhunters long gone. Shadowhunters Tessa had loved. “You should let that go,” Magnus advised. Tessa was a warlock like Magnus, and like Magnus, she was used to overcoming the memory of what had been loved and lost. They were in the longtime habit of comforting each other. She took another sip of tea, her smile restored as if it had never been gone. “I certainly have let it go,” she replied. “Now.

An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now.

The most difficult journey any of us ever take in our adulthood is the return to our parents’ house. A home visit makes us recall all of the childhood events that formed us. Returning home reacquaints us with family members and our former self.

We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being.

Scrolling on his phone passed the time as he fought to tamp down the swelling tide of memories and miseries.

It's a strange ache, that begins with a sudden flash of memory, while you are happily immersed in your favourite song or cooking your favourite dish - in the midst of just anything. An ache that suddenly drifts your energy, from enjoyment to controlling those tears scrolling down. All that swing in a wink, without the one next to you ever realising any sign of the sudden storm within you." Well, that's just the price you pay for choosing to feel.

Artham felt lighter and stronger, and for the first time in nine years, his mind was clear and sure. The words to a hundred of his own poems scrolled across his memory; he saw faces of old friends, battles he had fought, and even the most terrible moments of his life - and yet he remained himself. The wild animal inside that he had struggled so long to kill pulsed with power, but it was no longer his master. He rode the pain like a knight rides a horse. ... Artham's eyes watered from the wind and from the speed and from the magnificent beauty of the land arrayed below him. Water streaked from the corners of his eyes ... and , in the vicious cold froze into silvery jewels. He would have to write a poem about this.

Gift cards?” Hi’s complaining brought me back to the present. “Why not just hand me a note that says: I don’t care enough to make an effort.” April 7. Hiram Stolowitski’s sixteenth birthday. “When exactly were we supposed to shop?” Shelton was scrolling Rex Gable emails on his laptop. “It’s been a hectic week, bro.” “I bought you Assassin’s Creed six weeks before your birthday,” Hi shot back. “Waited in line all afternoon. The guy behind me smelled like fish tacos, but I stuck it out.” Ben clapped Hi’s shoulder. “If it helps, I didn’t remember to get you any gift. Tory and Shelton picked that up. I signed the card though. See? Ben. Right there.” “These are the memories that scar,” Hi huffed. “I’m gonna be so complicated when I grow up. I’ll probably film documentaries.

Writing about oneself is an egotistical adventure unless the act of self-exploration revolves around the distinct goal of heightening a person’s cache of knowledge, ideas, and level of self-awareness.

We write our personal story as intermittent authors; the narrator is always searching for a unitive point of view. We strive to perceive oneself from a unified perspective, but it is virtually impossible to do so. Human perception of the self is an illusion. We constantly sift through shifting memories. We experience the present under the fragrance cast by the past and under the illusionary aura of the future.

Reality does not create the entire womb of human life. We have eyes that witness truth and beauty. We are creatures that think, plan, dream, and remember. The lambent luminescence supplied by human memory reveals that we live in a dream world. Human imagination tied to memory tells us how to live today and forevermore.

Because...” he used to cradle his daughter in his arms every morning and often they would exchange soft nuances “...if you can dream it, if you can see it in your visions at night, if you can feel it in your soul, it’s yours! And it never really belonged to anyone else, in the first place! It was always yours!” Viera returned her scroll to the drawer and closed it, she kissed the compass around her neck and climbed into her bed under the warm quilts, the candle flame crackled and the memories of her father’s arms around her embraced her there in bed and his deep, hoarse voice resounded in her ears; “... and if you chance upon a treasure that is yours and it happens to be in the possession of someone else, it’s not very wrong to take what is yours, to take what you dreamed, what you saw in your visions at night, what you felt visit you in your spirit! Sure, it’s not lawful, but aye aye my little one, listen to me when I tell you that the best things in life are not under the laws of any sort! For which law created love? Which law created courage? The best things, the real things, are the things that are not measured by any man’s laws! Fear is the only thing that any law has ever created! And what kind of pirates would we all be if we were afraid of any of our fears, even a little!

His prime resource is the leaky vessel of is own memory. At times he views it thus, quite literally- as some old pail with holes and rusted seams. Alternatively, he imagines an extensive manuscript of which there survive only a handful of charred fragments; it is like trying to piece together the Gospels from the Dead Sea Scrolls....

We must not despair the evanescent nature of time or our brief existence; we must embrace our delectable moment on earth. Life is a fantastic dream where we rejoice in the incomparable beauty of this misty world of ethereal sensations and sentiments. Buddha said, “It is better to travel well than to arrive.” We must swim with the tide and rejoice in life of memory, dreams, and the beauty that is transpiring before our very eyes. Indian Buddhist teacher and philosopher Nagarjuna advises in “The Diamond Sutra,” to enjoy the dream world, “Thus shall you think of this fleeting world: A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream; a flash of lightening in a summer cloud; a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

The ego is the culmination of our preferences and dislikes. Our ego represents the firm edges of how we perceive ourselves. An ego death involves a merciless destruction of the autobiographical memory system that sustains a person’s collective of bodily and mental images. In order to provoke an ego death, one might choose to pare down their sense of self to a bare skeleton divested of all flesh and blood. It might even be useful to visualize a person’s own burial and then imagine a rebirth. A person who undergoes an ego death might experience a transformation in their life that duplicates a reincarnation.

Time possesses emotional potency. For persons whom suffer from of bereavement, time possesses a healing capacity. Passage of time cures heartache by dimming the mind’s attunement to painful occurrences. For some people, the passage of time is akin to placing a welcomed physical boundary between themselves and past horrors. Passage of time allows us to forget and the ability to forget is medicinal. Time acts as a mental barrier between our present mental state and the pain that we once felt.

Conscious fun takes effort. This seeming paradox—Why should fun be work?—stops us in our tracks. So we overindulge in effortless fun (scrolling through Instagram . . .) It is the effortful fun that makes today different, and makes today land in memory. You don’t say “Where did the time go?” when you remember where the time went.

The Pannion Domin … why are we sparing a mole’s ass for some upstart zealots? These things burn out. Every time. They implode. The scroll scribblers take over – they always do – and start arguing obscure details of the faith. Sects form. Civil war erupts, and there it is, just one more dead flower trampled on history’s endless road.

All forms of writing are an act of conception; writing must lead to creation. Each time that we write, we begin again. Writing is an act of self-affirmation. Each time that we place our thoughts onto paper, we receive a new opportunity to claim our reality. Writing is also an act of explication and deconstruction. Writing empowers us to shape and modify our fiery constitutions. Writing allows us to explore the essential ingredients that lead to a life of serenity by exhibiting compassion, love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness.

Experiencing terrible pain opens our hearts and minds to express compassion for other people and communion with ourselves.

In a suspended psychic state, writers cull words and symbols from the mystical world of memory, imagination, and intuition.

Our most potent memories include the taste and smells of foods we enjoyed as a child in part because it reminds us of who fed us a meal.

Memory, imagination, and passionately responding in accord with the deeply embedded impulse to act with decency are pliable mechanisms that we can employ to attain happiness.

All writers want to a place their mark upon human consciousness by creating a physical record of their distinctive thoughts and an index of their cherished emotional memories.

We must treasure our memories just as we cherish our dreams because without dreams and memory human life would be sad, brutal, and meaningless.

We must exude a sense of proportional gratitude that humankind’s exquisite texture is composed of a feeling soul and an intelligent will, which people refer to as memory of the heart.

with you, the sense i have lost my place in a book or simply lost — misplaced the memory which isn't in the last place where I looked. a thought that the clouds don't move — that it is we who thunder past — there it is! an old vacation, a train ride — sense of immobility. as sky and forest scroll past in relation, we are not moved, pretend to love the view, resort at length to scripted conversation by a poet-turned-screenwriter who didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrong and now drafts action film scripts wholly two- dimensional unless you choose to don the 3d glasses that do not stay on —

The tangible and factual components of reality along with the intangible strands of memory and imagination constitute the framework that houses our vital life force. A person is likewise composed of contradictory and complementary forces of pain and pleasure, darkness and lightness, and clashing and harmonizing bands of thoughts and feelings. The web and root of all persons consists of both the expressible and the unsayable. Who has not held imaginary conversations with gods, devils, and spirits? Persons whom enthusiastically cultivate an inner life, ardently experience the quick of nature, and willingly immerse themselves in all aspects of everyday living will experience renewal. Analogous to the heat source of fire, we need the spark of desire to fuel our hearts and the spirit of the breeze to spread our heart songs.

From anger results delusion, from delusion results confusion of memory ...’ Not only anger, but a scroll of other unhappy emotions can fog your mind: fear, depression, self-pity, envy, grief, hatred, restlessness, anxiety.

Nothing cuts a neural route faster through the brain then a pinch of pain. Periods of unhappiness penetrate and scar the brain. Experiencing intense periods of unpleasantness incites us to grow. If we can bunt the destructive forces of extreme pain and embrace its forceful impact for its educational value, experiencing profound pain causes us to appreciate the pleasure of simply living in the moment, enjoying each blade of grass in nature’s glorious bouts of beauty.

Silveny's pregnant,' Sophie told her friends when she joined them for breakfast. Fitz dropped his fork. 'Are you sure?' 'Oh yeah,' Sophie mumbled, sinking into the chair next to him. 'She showed me...' 'GAH!' everyone said. Keefe pushed his plate away. 'I'm done with food forever.' 'Me too,' Dex agreed. 'Me three,' Biana said. 'Seriously, that is one batch of memories you do not have to show me,' Fitz told Sophie. 'I don't care if it's part of our Cognate training.' 'But it's still huge,' Biana added. 'Do you know how far along she is?' 'I'm guessing it's new, since the last few times I transmitted to her she didn't mention anything about--' 'STOP!' Keefe held up his hands. 'Ground rules for this conversation: All talk of alicorn baby-making is off the table--got it? Otherwise I'll have to rip my ears off. And for the record, I do not want to be there when Baby Glitterbutt arrives.' 'Me either,' Fitz said. 'My dad made me go to the Hekses' unicorn preserve for a delivery one time.' He shuddered. 'Who knew they came out so slimy?' 'Ew, dude, I did not need to know that. Can we talk about something else? Anything else?' 'Does anyone know how long alicorns stay pregnant?' Sophie asked. Biana shook her head. 'We've never had a baby alicorn before. But I'm pretty sure unicorns are pregnant for eleven months. So maybe it's the same?' 'Do you think Silveny knows?' Fitz asked. 'If her instincts are telling her she's pregnant, maybe they'll also tell her how it's going to work.' 'I guess I can ask. It was hard to get information out of her. All she wanted to tell me about was--' 'STOP!' Keefe said. 'I wasn't going to say that. She was telling me that she's really hungry. I'm not sure if it's a pregnancy craving or an excuse to get more treats, but she went on and on about how she needs more swizzlespice. We'll have to find a way to let Jurek know. 'Do you think he already knows?' Fitz asked. 'He's the equestrian caretaker at the Sanctuary. Maybe he...saw stuff.' 'WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THE GROUND RULES?' Keefe shouted, covering his ears. 'That's it, this conversation is officially over. Next person who says "alicorn" is getting pelted with fruit.' 'What's wrong with the alicorns?' Granite asked behind them. He'd arrived with Mr. Forkle, each of them carrying stacks of scrolls. 'Silveny's pregnant," Sophie said, and all the scrolls went THUNK! 'Are you certain?' Granite whispered, bending to gather the uncurling paper. Sophie nodded, and Mr. Forkle rushed to her side. 'Tell me everything.' 'And I'm out!' Keefe said, covering his ears and singing, 'LALALALALA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!' as he raced up the stairs to the boys' tree house.

And so this end in confusion, where when things stop I never get to know it, and this moving is the space, is that what is yet to be, which is for others to see filled wherever it may finally be in the frame when the last pieces are fitted and the others stop, and there will be the stopped pattern, the final array, but not even that, because that final finitude will itself be a bit of scrolling, a percent clump of tiles, which will generally stay together but move about within another whole and be mingled, with in endless ways of other people's memories, so that I will remain a set of impressions porous and open to combination with all of the other vitreous squares floating about in whoever else's frames, because there is always the space left in reserve for the rest of their downtime, and to my great-grandchildren, with more space than tiles, I will be no more than the smoky arrangement of a set of rumors, and to their great-grandchildren, I will be no more than a tint of some obscure color, and to their great grandchildren nothing they ever know about, and so what army of strangers and ghosts has shaped and colored me until back to Adam, until back to when ribs were blown from molten sand into the glass bits that took up the light of this world because they were made from this world, even though the fleeting tenants of those bits of colored glass have vacated them before they have had even the remotest understanding of what it is to inhabit them, and if they -- if we are fortunate (yes, I am lucky, lucky), and if we are fortunate, have fleeting instants when we are satisfied that the mystery is ours to ponder, if never to solve, or even just rife personal mysteries, never mind those outside-- are there even mysteries outside? a puzzle itself -- but anyway, personal mysteries, like where is my father, why can't I stop all the moving and look out over the vast arrangements and find by the contours and colors and qualities of light where my father is, not to solve anything but just simple even to see it again one last time, before what, before it ends, before it stops. But it doesn't stop; it simply ends. It is a final pattern scattered without so much as a pause at the end, at the end of what, at the end of this.

Each generation searches their memories for time lost, feels the urgent exigencies of the present, and worries about the uncertainty of the future. Akin to preceding generations, how we live, the choices we make for surviving and loving, is our story.

Writing allows us to exploit the synergistic dynamics of the human brain including memory, the ability to engage in constructive research, visually scrutinize our private thoughts, and discuss and share an evolving linkwork of thoughts with other people.

Self-reflection enables every person to alter the trajectory of their personal storyline by reviewing a series of episodic occurrences and making value judgments regarding the past. How we perceive our history colors the present, our deeds of today script the future outcome of individual persons, and the outcome of many people making conscious decisions using their cognitive processes including the ability to remember and share memories influences the direction of human development and the progress of society.

We are born with the innate capacity to express empathy. Experiencing our own cuts and bruises, encountering our own difficulties and disappointments, expands our cognitive world and rouses the universal desire to understand and comfort other people in pain.

Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future.

Daily life is an ongoing adaptation process of imprinting our memory’s storage center with useful data and the ceaseless expurgation of undesirable facts, exfoliation of destructive thoughts, and weeding out annoying emotional quirks that seemingly sprout out of thin air.

Parallel to tenderness and cruelty, the cataracts of pleasure and pain are interrelated. Painful and pleasurable sensations instruct us of our physical boundaries. The collective scorecard of physical pain and pleasurable sensations define the evolving self. Our internal clockworks comprised of remembrances of times past, both painful and pleasurable, provide each of us with a telling emotional autobiography. What we primarily recall – pain or pleasure – is revelatory. How we act with kindness and tenderheartedly, or hardheartedly and cruelly is equally telling.

Most new ideas come to us not through pure logic, but through a fusion of memory and imagination. If new ideas were purely a product of rationality, other people would quickly grasp and embrace novel solutions. People’s lack of imagination prevents them from comprehending the significance of an innovative idea.

Making art requires a degree of intentionality. All works of art require a contemplative individual drawing from their bank of knowledge and immersion into the realms of memory and imagination in order to make an outward, communicative expression. Only human beings can draw upon the dialectical tension between memory and imagination to create artistic renderings.

There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them. So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone. Though they never disappeared completely, of course. But they were at least more distant—they weren’t things that followed you, wraithlike, tugging at you for attention, jumping in front of you when you ignored them, demanding so much of your time and effort that it became impossible to think of anything else. In fallow periods—the moments before you fell asleep; the minutes before you were landing after an overnight flight, when you weren’t awake enough to do work and weren’t tired enough to sleep—they would reassert themselves, and so it was best to imagine, then, a screen of white, huge and light-lit and still, and hold it in your mind like a shield.

Nature endowed human beings with two teleological components that define our essential humanity: consciousness and memory. Consciousness enables people to make decisions, and memory allows us to learn and share our accumulated knowledge. Cognitive endowments of consciousness and knowledge allow people to ascribe a meaning to existence, by establishing a direction and purpose to their life.

Conscious fun takes effort. This seeming paradox—Why should fun be work?—stops us in our tracks. So we overindulge in effortless fun (scrolling through Instagram posts about dinner parties), and underindulge in effortful fun (throwing a dinner party ourselves). But “although minutes spent in boredom or anxiety pass slowly,” writes Grudin, “they nonetheless add up to years which are void of memory.

There are many types of teachable moments in life. Contentment is not always the most fertile ground to garner self-knowledge. At times, bitter memories can force us to change and teach us to avoid duplicating past conduct that led to regret and remorse. The greater the degree of anxiety that we assign to periods of uncertainty and distress the less likely we will resort to duplicating these problematic experiences in the future.

Human beings intuitively divide time into the past, the present, and the future. We perceive the past as immutable and fixed, the present as reflecting actuality, and the future as undefined and nebulous. As time passes, the moment that was once was part of the present becomes part of the past; and a moment of the heretofore previously unrealized future arrives and becomes the new present. The past is a record, the present is real, and the future is an imaginary thought.

Catarina hooked her hand around Magnus’s elbow and hauled him away, like a schoolteacher with a misbehaving student. They entered a narrow alcove around the corner, where the music and noise of the party was muffled. She rounded on him. “I recently treated Tessa for wounds she said were inflicted on her by members of a demon-worshipping cult,” Catarina said. “She told me you were, and I quote, ‘handling’ the cult. What’s going on? Explain.” Magnus made a face. “I may have had a hand in founding it.” “How much of a hand?” “Well, both.” Catarina bristled. “I specifically told you not to do that!” “You did?” Magnus said. A bubble of hope grew within him. “You remember what happened?” She gave him a look of distress. “You don’t?” “Someone took all my memories around the subject of this cult,” said Magnus. “I don’t know who, or why.” He sounded more desperate than he would’ve liked, more desperate than he wanted to be. His old friend’s face was full of sympathy. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “I met up with you and Ragnor for a brief vacation. You seemed troubled, but you were trying to laugh it off, the way you always do. You and Ragnor said you had a brilliant idea to start a joke cult. I told you not to do it. That’s it.” He, Catarina, and Ragnor had taken many trips together, over the centuries. One memorable trip had gotten Magnus banished from Peru. He had always enjoyed those adventures more than any others. Being with his friends almost felt like having a home. He did not know if there would ever be another trip. Ragnor was dead, and Magnus might have done something terrible. “Why didn’t you stop me?” he asked. “You usually stop me!” “I had to take an orphan child across an ocean to save his life.” “Right,” said Magnus. “That’s a good reason.” Catarina shook her head. “I took my eyes off you for one second.” She had worked in mundane hospitals in New York for decades. She saved orphans. She healed the sick. She’d always been the voice of reason in the trio that was Ragnor, Catarina, and Magnus. “So I planned with Ragnor to start a joke cult, and I guess I did it. Now the joke cult is a real cult, and they have a new leader. It sounds like they’re mixed up with a Greater Demon.” Even to Catarina, he wouldn’t say the name of his father. “Sounds like the joke has gotten a little out of hand,” Catarina said dryly. “Sounds like I’m the punch line.

Happiness depends upon the quality of our thoughts and the purposefulness of our deeds. Unhappy people are the prisoners of their own thoughts, memories, and accumulated experiences. Only by finding joyfulness that rest within our deepest fissures are we truly free from earthy demons of sadness, anger, and hatred. We attain bliss by amicably immersing ourselves in all facets of life. Living joyfully is living life effortlessly by appreciating the enchanting beauty in each moment of our existence.

Unlike essayists whom write primarily to understand complex situations or convince other people of the righteousness of their opinions, poets strive to stir memories, provoke feelings, and evoke emotions. Poets do not write to reach that exalted perch where logic replaces feelings. Poets write about the connective tissue that makes us human, the poignant remembrances, hopes, fears, and emotions of humankind. It is not our ability to think standing alone that makes us human, but a mélange of incongruous feelings, emotional tidings that are virtually inexpressible.

Recounting the narrative of our personal story in a methodical and chronological manner helps us see our life in a historical perspective. Telling our personal stories allows us to bring hibernated memories out of seclusion. Reexamination of our historical existence under the light of growing conscious awareness assist us make psychological breakthroughs. Analyzing the elemental substance of our personal story from a sundry of viewpoints employing techniques of literature, philosophy, logical reasoning, and abstract thinking assist us perceive our discrete chronicle in symbolic terms and in mythological context.

An artist adopts a radically different view regarding the importance of time than a businessperson does. Instead of perceiving time as a merchantable facet doled out incrementally according to marketplace demands, an artist portrays time as an agent of destruction. The irrevocability of time frames the human condition. Time might the medium of all human experience, but its passage obscures and eventually obliterates all human endeavors. Time unchecked leads to a blank slate of nothingness. Time’s destructive march towards meaningless is arrested through memory and art depicting humankind’s struggles and accomplishments.

Our emotional valence – positive or negative experiences – affects not only how we narrate childhood events, but also which memories we retain. The interplay between a person encountering environment experiences meshed with self-editing of various aspects of their complex memory system results in a person becoming more than a collection of memories: a person creates their personalized version of a self. A person integrates many experiences into creating their being. Personal encounters with other people as well as moments of personal solitude contemplating ideas and personal existence congeal to form the depiction of a self.

Personal essayists write in large part to escape pent-up emotional anxiety, retreat behind the typewriter or digital keyboard in an attempt to regroup before blithely pushing forward on the cambered road of life. Some essayists might be uncomfortable reconnoitering their memories and, in a perverse twist, largely write in an effort to forget, to consign their uncomfortable emotional perplexities to a dead letter file. In contrast, I wonder if most people write poetry because they do not wish to wipe their mental kit clear. Poets might write because they wish to remember evocative experiences and they wish to share their feelings.

When people pass on we must choose how to remember them. While our loved ones sleep for eternity we must carry on with our daily toil. We can elect to harbor adoration and love in our precious memories or cling to animosity and detestation. We can kindly remember our ancestors or continue to feel embedded enmity towards people who no longer walk this earth. Regardless the human frailties of the recently departed, it seems that we should aspire to clutch the best part of our ancestors being fast to our hearts. A book encapsulating a departed person’s life has many pages; we must choose which chapters to treasure and what chapters to disregard or downplay.

Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.

It is rumored by the wise-brained rats which burrow the citied earth and by the knowledgeable cats that stalk its shadows and by the sagacious bats that wing its night and by the sapient zats which soar through airless space, slanting their metal wings to winds of light, that those two swordsmen and blood-brothers, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, have adventured not only in the World of Nehwon with its great empire of Lankhmar, but also in many other worlds and times and dimensions, arriving at these through certain secret doors far inside the mazy caverns of Ningauble of the Seven Eyes—whose great cave, in this sense, exists simultaneously in many worlds and times. It is a Door, while Ningauble glibly speaks the languages of many worlds and universes, loving the gossip of all times and places. In each new world, the rumor goes, the Mouser and Fafhrd awaken with knowledge and speaking skills and personal memories suitable to it, and Nehwon then seems to them only a dream and they know not its languages, though it is ever their primal homeland. It is even whispered that on one occasion they lived a life in that strangest of worlds variously called Gaia, Midgard, Terra, and Earth, swashbuckling there along the eastern shore of an inner sea in kingdoms that were great fragments of a vasty empire carved out a century before by one called Alexander the Great. So much Srith of the Scrolls has to tell us. What we know from informants closer to the source is as follows:

Silent remembering is a form of prayer. No fragrance is more enchanting to re-experience than the aromatic bouquet gleaned from inhaling the cherished memories of our pastimes. We regularly spot elderly citizens sitting alone gently rocking themselves while facing the glowing sun. Although these sun worshipers might appear lonely in their state of serene solitude, they are not alone at all, because they deeply enmesh themselves in recalling the glimmering memories of days gone by. Marcel Proust wrote “In Search of Time Lost,” “As with the future, it is not all at once but grain by grain that one savors the past.” Test tasting the honeycombed memories of their bygone years, a delicate smile play out on their rose thin lips. The mellow tang of sweet tea memories – childhood adventures, coming of age rituals, wedding rites, recreational jaunts, wilderness explorations, viewing and creating art, literature, music, and poetry, sharing in the mystical experiences of life, and time spent with family – is the brew of irresistible intoxicants that we all long to sip as we grow old. The nectar mashed from a collection of choice memories produces a tray of digestible vignettes that each of us lovingly roll our silky tongues over. On the eve of lying down for the last time in the stillness of our cradled deathbeds, we will swaddle ourselves with a blanket of heartfelt love and whisper a crowning chaplet of affection for all of humanity. After all, we been heaven blessed to take with us to our final resting place an endless scroll amassing the kiss soft memories of time yore.

The poetry of music composes each generation of Americans’ autobiographical memories. Language and music represent two rotaries of the revolving and evolving wheels that we employ to internalize the axis of identification. Music plays a profound role in the definitive stages of most people’s lives. Reminiscent of the sounds and smells that flavored our youth, musical intonations organize our personal memories into temporal time sequence. Modulation of musical memories comprises an important quotient in people’s autographical memory system. If we listen to enough music, its pitch, tone, timbre, and cadence eventually seeps into our unconsciousness. The lilt of music becomes a portal through which we perceive, feel, and experience worldly inflections and how we synthesize swirling emotions.

Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.

Books...books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well...Books are a form of magic because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No-or at least, probably not. But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses...he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book...A piece of writing is a trap, and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive-which is knowledge-alive forever. The more books you have, the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast-one that might otherwise die unseen.

The ability to perceive and feel, along with the intricacies of family relations unites us as a species. Poets collect succulent physical sense impressions and heartfelt feelings with equal enthusiasm. Poets have the alacrity to see and feel what most of us fail to perceive or otherwise ignore, take for granted, or attempt to forget. Similar to the art of Ukiyo-e (a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings depicting traditional Japanese scenes), poets make the nothingness of our lives come alive. Poets design their sun-filled salvations out of the minutia of nature and the seemingly ordinary happenings of life. Although essayist can also explore the liminal spaces of daily life by probing the avenues of common experiences, essayists are more interested in testing ideas and principles than in invoking memories, sharing feelings, or eliciting emotions.

Only an hour in, and already the first temptation: the warmth of my blankets and bed, my pillows and the fake-fur throw Hannah's mom left here after a weekend visit. They're all saying, Climb in. No one will know if you stay in bed all day. No one will know if you wear the same sweatpants for the entire month, if you eat every meal in front of television shows and use t-shirts as napkins. Go ahead and listen to that same song on repeat until its sound turns to nothing and you sleep the winter away. I only have Mabel's visit to get through, and then all this could be mine. I could scroll through Twitter until my vision blurs and then collapse on my bed like an Oscar Wilde character. I could score myself a bottle of whiskey and let it make me glow, let all the room's edges go soft, let the memories out of their cages. Maybe I would hear him sing again, if all else went quiet.

There was a time when I thought that my life's significant work would be to write a history of the Six Duchies. I made a start on it any number of times, but always seemed to slide sideways from that grand tale into a recounting of the days and details of my own small life. The more I studied the accounts of others, both written and told, the more it seemed to me that we attempt such histories not to preserve knowledge, but to fix the past in a settled way. Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever. I wrote my history and my observations. I captured my thoughts and ideas and memories in words on vellum and paper. So much I stored, and thought it was mine. I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense on all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. Perhaps I sought to justify myself, not just all I had done, but who I had become. For years, I wrote faithfully nearly every evening, carefully explaining my world and my life to myself. I put my scrolls on a shelf, trusting that I had captured the meaning of my days. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet set, snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down on them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

Next morning, Emma had more of unusual impressions, from the nightdream she saw before the moment she woke up: The girl flew inside some darkness, feeling really tired; soon, she decided to have a nap laying onto… some Galaxy! She was herself as big as the Universe… Or was it she the part of that macrocosm? Then, Emma jumped down from the space, landing in… her bedroom where she used to fall asleep… and there she noticed her cousin Billy who was entering the room, accidentally touching Clifford’s brown scarf that hung on the moose antlers (which really were there, nailed to the wall and serving as hangers)… The scarves fall down… and she wakes up. Emily closed her eyes again, scrolling her memories about how it felt—to rest on the top of the Galaxy. “Who are we people, in all that global greatness of the space? …Considering things in the ecumenical measure, we are the microbes of the Universe,” the girl discoursed her thoughts.

Self-evaluation proved to be distasteful business. The refraction of light created from an undulating wave of critical self-observation passing through a tarnished lens produces its own morose, self-negating fixations that can result in a dangerous downward spiral. Unless timely arrested, murderous bouts of self-hatred can destroy a person. A person must use self-detestation exclusively as a means to pry oneself away from the haunting specter created courtesy of the clamor, filth, and grunginess of their prior anarchism. Kick starting a stranded person’s emotional motors through reflective contemplation and thoughtful rumination acts to prod loose remote memories seared in the unspoken silence of a person’s unconscious memory bank. Self-discovery is also an uplifting affair. Contemplation helps one confront their streaked presence and realign their inner voice with the sanguine spirits of their ancestors that preceded one in the walk through time.

Life is a collection of memories and feelings. Mawkish sentimentally urges us to engage in artistic overtures, we yearn to share with other people a melody of rudimentary experiences and respond to a stabilizing tune strung together with a shared ethos. We walk in parallel strides with our brethren seeking out equivalent affirmations of our being. We long to shout out to the world that we once walked this earth; we seek to leave in our wake traces of our pithy habitation. Our unfilled longing propels us into committing senseless acts of self-sabotage and then we desperately seek redemption from our slippery selves by building monuments to the human spirit. We employ a bewildering blend of conscious and unconscious materials to construct synoptic testaments to our temporal existence. We labor on the canvas of our choosing to scrawl our inimitable mark, fanatically toiling to escape a sentence of total obliteration along with our impending mortality.

Deprived of all forms of memory, people would act only to satiate the immediacy of their base cravings. Without past memories acting as guidepost, humankind’s dynamics diminish to the entropy of commission and reaction. The desire to achieve lastingness would be frivolous without appreciation of our joint history. In absence of historical awareness, there could be no culture dialogue or community inwardness. Absent historical awareness, there would be no evolving community consciousness and there would be no social engine capable of generating any communities’ battery of self-determinacy. Self-improvement would be frivolous without forging an intimate relationship with our historiology as well as familiarity with the account of select people’s exhibited character traits that we might wish to emulate. Notions of personal pliancy and individual lability would lose its root structure without the prongs of memory to provide the necessary griddle and supporting trusses to configure and provide cohesion for our developing sense of selfhood.

Personal memory – the palest of all lights – is the wellspring of personality and creativity. Memory is the also the cornerstone of culture and the basis of community and family relationships. Without memories of our thoughts and actions, we would not recognize our individual self. Without personal memories, there is no personal character or soul of a nation. Without contextual memories, the concept of universal principles of goodwill and the individual desire to perform noble selfless acts would be moot. There can be no symmetry in any human relations without memories to provide a baseline foundation for reflection and contemplation. It would fatally tax a person’s desire to achieve fairness in their personal dealings without memories of prior acts of greed or benevolence to provide structure for judging the merits of their current behavioral options. Without the haunting of memory to remind us of our propensity to hate outsiders and readiness to overlook the disfranchised, there would be wholesale discrimination and unchecked commission of infamous crimes.

Without the aid of memory, human cognition would be nil. Without memory, there can be no thinking, no learning, no accumulation of shared knowledge, and no philosophy. Thinking requires the capacity to recall. Thinking is what enables human beings the ability to understand cause and effect, recognize patterns of significance, comprehend the unique context of experience, measure personal activities, and respond to the world in a meaningful way. Knowledge is memory based. Learning demands the acquisition of studious observations and learned information, the ability to recall a slew of previously held factoids on command, and logically and intuitively to extrapolate from such objective facts. Without memory, there could be no morality. Awareness of humankind’s ineluctable sense of impermanence requires the ability to comprehend times passage through use of stored memories. Without the epic sense of being that memory supplies us, there would be no understanding of eternity, we would remain ignorant of the unremitting thump of time, and therefore, we would be forever unaware of humankind’s wretched transience.

A writer toils to combat the insufficiency plaguing his or her life. Every writer seeks to ward off the corrosive obliteration wrought by the passage of time upon memory by capturing on paper his or her present day thoughts on life. For these intrepid souls, writing not only entails a lifetime of work it also represents their very lifeblood spilled out onto sheets of virgin white paper. Writers’ inkblot of words forms a pictograph for present and future generations to view; their thoughtful elucidations speak to us from the grave. Writers’ words transcend time by creating indelible images that survive wars, famines, epidemics, and censorship. Thanks to great writers, every man, woman, or child can escape the confines of their own cloistered environment and converse with other people of every occupation and lifestyle whose communal heartbeats form the bloodstream of every city. Thanks to literary figures, each reader can peer into the depths of past generations whose eclectic filament forms the ever-evolving equitable eye in humankinds’ collective consciousness, or colloquially what we refer to as humanity.

Memory is the essential cornerstone of humanity. There would be no spiritual platform for enactment of public policy directed at uplifting the poor without remembrance of our munificent traditions and customs. Without the ability to recollect the why and wherefores, there would be no tolerance or wondrous love. Without oral memories of the instructions issued by our prophets and patriarchs, there would be no reminder of their charitable calling. Memories prompt us magnanimously to provide for and protect our family, love our neighbors and enemies, and pray for unsavory souls whom persecute us. Without memories of our prior actions and omissions, there would be no confession, and no repentance. Without memories of our personal transgressions, there would be no tolerance for other people. Without memories of heroic action of our predecessors, there would be no sterling examples to exemplify and guide honorable human behavior. Memories are what we rely upon to understand what it means to be human. Shared memories of affection and kindness and recollections of selfless acts fuse the ties of families. Collective memories establish community culture.

The author explores the contours of a restless mind racked with fear and doubt and questions the origins of his personal disenchantment and cynical bitterness. Do other people share similar feelings of disquiet and despair, and how does a person escape a vortex of suffering? Perchance he can marshal human beings’ innate gifts of memory, language, and consciousness to transform his vile existence. Perhaps by studiously examining the self and seeking to unite all disparate parts of a fragmented psyche, he will become a thoughtful, considerate, and affectionate man who lives joyfully without pangs of pain, shame, and misgivings. The goal of this vision quest is to attain personal harmony with the world and enjoy an admirable state of attentive mindfulness after investigating and expressing all that is sayable pertaining the meaning of existence and the unique features of being human. The author aspires to discard frivolous attachments, pierce mental delusions, and attain a peaceful state of serenity by accepting reality and appreciating the incomparable beauty of this magnificent world and the little pleasures that each unfolding day affords. Perhaps writing of his struggles to transcend his own pain and develop the wisdom and serenity of the mind that comes from living an examined life might even provide a template for other people explore their own life story.

Over time, the active verbs of the Shema-recite, walk, talk, lie down, rise, bind, fix, write, all in the service of love-become too much for us to imagine, let alone perform. Our search for superpowers has created many of the most pressing problems of our time. The defining mental activity of our time is scrolling Our capacities of attention, memory, and concentration are diminishing; to compensate, we toggle back and forth between infinite feeds of news, posts, images, episodes - taking shallow hits of trivia, humor, and outrage to make up for the depths of learning, joy, and genuine lament that now feel beyond our reach. The defining illness of our time is metabolic syndrome, the chronic combination of high weight, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar that is the hallmark of an inactive life. Our strength is atrophying and our waistline expanding, and to compensate, we turn to the superpowers of the supermarket with the aisles of salt and fat convincing our bodies’ reward systems, one bite at a time, that we have never been better in our life. The defining emotional challenge of our time is anxiety, the fear of what might be instead of the courageous pursuit of what could be. Once, we lived with allness of heart, with a boldness of quest that was too in love with the good to call off the pursuit when we encountered risk. Now we live as voyeurs, pursuing shadowy vestiges of what we desire from behind the one-way mirror of a screen, invulnerable but alone. And, of course, the soul is the plane of human ex- istence that our technological age neglects most of all. Jesus asked whether it was worth gaining the whole world at the cost of losing one's soul. But in the era of superpowers, we have not only lost a great deal of our souls-we have lost much of the world as well. We are rarely overwhelmed by wind or rain or snow. We rarely see, let alone name, the stars. We have lost the sense that we are both at home and on a pilgrimage in the vast, mysterious cosmos, anchored in a rich reality beyond ourselves. We have lost our souls without even gaining the world. So it is no wonder that the defining condition of our time is a sense of loneliness and alienation. For if human flourishing requires us to love with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, what happens When nothing in our lives develops those capacities? With what, exactly, will we love?

The members of the Sanhedrin who met to try Jesus violated ethical standards held not only by Pharisees but even by many Gentile moralists of the period. Trials were supposed to be conducted during daylight, in the normal meeting hall (in this case that was near the temple), not in the leading judge’s home. Whereas Pharisees opposed hasty executions after deliberations, the Sadducees were known for harsh and often quick punishments. The most obvious breach of ethics, of course, is the presence of false and mutually contradictory witnesses. Clearly some members of the Sanhedrin present acted with legal integrity, cross-examining the witnesses, but by Pharisaic standards, the case should have been thrown out once the witnesses contradicted one another (Mk 14:59). The high priest’s plan may have been simply to have a preliminary hearing to formulate a charge to bring to Pilate (cf. Mt 27:1; Mk 15:1; Lk 22:66; 23:1), the expected procedure before accusing someone before the governor. The actions of the Sanhedrin fit what we know of the period. The Roman government usually depended on local elites to charge troublemakers. Local elites were often corrupt, and all our other sources from the period (Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Pharisaic memories) agree that the aristocratic priesthood that controlled Jerusalem abused its power against others. A generation later, the chief priests arrested a Jewish prophet for announcing judgment against the temple; they handed him over to a Roman governor, who had him beaten until (Josephus says) his bones showed (Josephus, Wars 6.300–305). Their treatment of Jesus fits their usual behavior toward those who challenged their authority. ◆

One fact that I discovered as a parent is that we must treasure our child every day of their life. A child does not remain the same; they are a different person at various stages in their lives.

Only the passage of time ultimately separates each generation. Our humanity remains stalwartly impervious to political manipulations and to the social, culture and economic tidings that each generation must etch out a living. Our sense of time past, present and future is the common denominator that each generation shares because time refuses to standstill for mere human beings. Time cannot be ignored or shunted, but must be respected for the indomitable power that its relentless pressure applies upon each of us. The unyielding power of time sneers at each of us regardless of our race, religion, creed, nationality, gender, age, or sexual orientation. Potency of time is irreducible, it is irreversible, and it is inerasable. Through the periscope of memory, we can dice snippets of time’s atoms into infinitesimal pictures of mere moments; we can harness select prized memories to build a molecular mind’s magical playhouse. The capacity of the human mind for memory enables people to preserve, retain, and subsequently recall knowledge, information, and experience. Replaying snapshots of the past enables us to comprehend the magnitude of the present and take account of the inevitability of our future.

Ancient generations passed down wisdom that all succeeding generations must apply and build upon. We are constantly learning how to interpret the past, not simply ancient history, but also from variegated educational encounters experienced in our own lifetime. We must listen to the voices of our ancestors whom passed along their hopes and dreams. We must also listen to our own youthful voice that optimistically projected the best type of world for us to live in and pass along to future generations of compassionate persons. The collective voices of passionate mavens of nature linked through time created the world that we now enjoy and together they shall alter this world in a profound manner for other people to witness and explore.

We are finite creates in a world of boundless space, endless time, and infinite matter. At any given moment, we are each a composition of our past memories, our present day exigencies, and our future expectations. Each passing day we modify our identity, filtering a continuum of past memories with our present day hopes and desires. The design of our future prospects shapes not only our present life, but also the furious pursuit of our dreams provides contexture for the lives of other people who will follow our loose-limbed march through time’s corridor. We search for an understanding of how to live in an age that will soon no longer exist. I am a bubble in space-time, an organic organism that will soon burst apart. I need to know why I lived. Acclaimed Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote in 1877 novel “Anna Karenina,” “Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either.

Smiling to myself, I pictured our family one sunny afternoon last fall. It had been a warm day, and we were on our way to the city aquarium. Dad had the car windows rolled down, and I recalled the feel of the wind in my hair and the scent of Mom’s perfume wafting from the seat in front of me. Mom and Dad were chatting and I was scrolling through my Instagram feed. But the moment the song sounded on the radio, I squealed. “Turn it up!” I said, leaning forward in my seat, enough that the belt tightened across my chest. As soon as Dad reached over and turned the knob, I started singing the lyrics aloud. Both Mom and Dad joined in. With the wind in my hair and the music filling the car, a warmth had filled my insides, almost as if I were wrapped in my favorite fuzzy blanket. The memory was fresh in my mind and I could still see Mom’s head bob up and down as she sang while Dad tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Come on, Dad!” I said, giggling. “Sing with us.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m waiting for my favorite part. I don’t want to stretch my singing muscles.” “What singing muscles?” Mom smiled at him. He put a finger in the air for her to wait. “Here we go.” When the chorus of the song began, Dad screeched out the lyrics in a really high voice. He was trying to mimic the singer’s voice but he wasn’t even close and the sound he made was terrible. I burst out laughing. He ignored me and continued to sing, all the while, waving a hand through the air with wide flourishes, as if conducting an orchestra. He tilted his head back and belted out the high notes. When we pulled up at a red traffic light and the car slowed to a stop, Dad was oblivious of the carload of people alongside us watching him. The passengers of the other car had their windows open too and I stared at them in horror. Their eyes were glued to Dad and they shook their heads and rolled their eyes. “Dad!” I called to him. “Those people are watching you.” But he didn’t hear me and continued to sing. I sank into my seat, my cheeks flushing. He finally realized he had an audience but instead of being embarrassed, he waved to them. “Hello, there!” he said. “Did you enjoy my singing?” The light turned green, and the carload of people cracked up laughing as their car lurched forward in their hurry to escape the weird man in the car next to theirs. Dad shrugged. “I guess not.’ Mom and I burst out laughing too, unable to hold it in any longer. Dad waved a dismissive hand. “They wouldn’t know good music if it hit them in the face.” Tears sprang from my eyes because I was laughing so hard. My dad could be so embarrassing sometimes, but that day, it didn’t bother me at all. Dad had always managed to make me laugh at the silliest things. He had a way of making me feel happy, regardless of what mood I was in. Deep down I thought he was a really cool dad. My friends thought so too. He wasn’t boring and super strict like their dads. He was fun to be around and everyone loved him for it, including my friends. Our little family was perfect, and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

A child’s earliest memories derive from pain, pleasure, or bewilderment.

Our first memory represents our initial state of consciousness.

Sleep frees the soul from the fetters of latent terrors and from the dreariness of material reality. Guiding dreams provide us with a forecast of the future. An optimistic dream or a frightful nightmare can manifest from suppressed ambition, a vivid daytime experience, a repressed memory, an undeveloped or unheeded thought, an ignored sensation, or an overlooked occurrence.

Aloneness allows time for deliberating and intellectual studies, but ultimately every person must share their knowledge of life if they want to remain a vibrant memory after their death.

When looking back on our lives, it is difficult objectively to evaluate our actions. When retelling our story, it is challenging to achieve balanced journalism. It is understandable why we might be inclined to overemphasize nostalgic feelings of happiness, glamorize stretches of childhood or other periods where life was rather uncomplicated, while assigning a disproportionate amount of anxiety to rougher periods of life. When we create strong, joyous memories, we preserve cherished feelings in the present. By assigning selective pleasant memories to the past, we create a homey place where we can return to visit. Fondness for nostalgic memories provides a buffer from existential threat, improves mood, combats loneliness, increases social consecutiveness, and enhances self-regard.

We use the tools of memory and imagination to construct and depict stories; they make up the double-sided face of the same mental coin. Memory houses many images. The ability mentally to depict and store images depends upon the power of association prompted by the rational and imaginative thoughts of the mind. Recollection of past thoughts is dependent upon the quality of our memory system. The Ancient Greeks taught us, memory is the mother of our personal muse.

Language is a tool that allows us to express our thoughts. We use mechanisms of language including oral storytelling and indicative writing to depict a storehouse of evocative images. Language links our mind’s tawny memory and blooming imagination to the world. Storytelling connects each of us to the consciousness of other people who inhabit this planet.

Both memory and imagination arrest time. By conjoining memory and imagination in forming storytelling’s language, style, and texture, writers’ negate the mind’s march into forgetfulness. We employ the full sprung use of memory and imagination to blunt our descent into nothingness.

Many modern movies premise the action upon themes identified in ancient myths. Americans are still attracted to the thematic urgency of ancient lore. Despite the advances made by scientist and America’s technological revolution, the universal questions that haunt human beings’ quietude remain unchanged. The subjects that interest us as a people provide useful instructions pertaining how to live. Do we choose the myths that we live by? Do we sort through a bin of past events and select telling stories that we wish to use to define our existence? Do we modify or eliminate handpicked memories that do not fit the fable that we nominate to define our walk through life?

Evocative memories seared onto the writer’s unconscious mind forms the essential cadence that brokers a writer’s telltale, shadowy light. Floundering in the commodious darkness, the writer’s seeks to discover a ray of lightness that inhabits the darkest recesses of their fitful humanity.