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Memory's Landscape

@memoryslandscape / memoryslandscape.tumblr.com

I have been born so much and twice as much have suffered in the memory of here and there. ~Alejandra Pizarnik
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memoryslandscape
a-quiet-green-agreement
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a-quiet-green-agreement

Despite these advances, the field of anatomy still had a great unsolved mystery at its core: the question of memory. While we knew a little about the structure of the brain, its physiology is notoriously hard to study because of the brain's extreme delicacy. It is typically the case in fatal accidents that, when the skull is breached, the brain erupts in a cloud of gold, leaving little besides shredded filament and leaf from which nothing useful can be discerned. For decades the prevailing theory of memory was that all of a person's experiences were engraved on sheets of gold foil; it was these sheets, torn apart by the force of the blast, that were the source of the tiny flakes found after accidents. Anatomists would collect the bits of gold leaf—so thin that light passes greenly through them—and spend years trying to reconstruct the original sheets, with the hope of eventually deciphering the symbols in which the deceased's recent experiences were inscribed.

– Ted Chiang, from “Exhalation,” Exhalation: Stories (Vintage, 2020)

#Ted Chiang#Exhalation#memory#short fiction#gold foil
memoryslandscape

Albert Einstein determined that time is relative—that the rate at which time passes depends on your frame of reference. I believe that this is how we operate as human beings. Fluid consciousnesses. The linear progression of past, present, and future. When I start a poem, it’s usually prompted by a thought that seems to come out of nowhere but is actually part of a continuum. That’s the impulse I use.

Through the process of creation, I allow my subconscious to write the poem. I’ve learned that subconsciousness is more powerful than the conscious dictation or active determination of a thought. In other words, I don’t think when I write. I start with an impulse and trust the culmination of my life experiences to inform my writing. I get out of the way of stopping to think too much, or what I call “lifting the pen,” and I simply let go and write nonstop for twenty to thirty minutes.

The culmination of my life experiences will automatically inform the conscious undertaking.

Mitchell Untch, from “Mitchell Untch on Grief and Letting the Subconscious Direct His Poems,” interview by Literary Hub, 12 June 2023

#Mitchell Untch#grief#time#poetry writing#writing process#subconsciousness
memoryslandscape
a-quiet-green-agreement
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a-quiet-green-agreement

"Let's not talk about that, not now, all right? It's so dark here and so lonely and we are standing so close together—isn't that enough? Let's be quiet, please. That's much nicer, don't you think?"

"It is raining, it is dark and lonely and we are standing close together—yes, of course, it's beautiful…"

– Wolfgang Borchert, from “Dear, Blue-Grey Night” The Sad Geraniums and Other Stories (The Ecco Press, 1973)

#Wolfgang Borcher#Dear Blue-Grey Sky#The Sad Geraniums and Other Stories#love lines#relationship#close together
memoryslandscape

There, where I come from,

is the only place I know where you can grab the night like a railing

to keep from falling through the dark.

— Humberto Ak’abal, “There,” transl. Michael Bazzett, The American Poetry Review (vo. 52, no, 4, July / August 2023)

#Humberto Ak’aba#dark#night#There
memoryslandscape
a-quiet-green-agreement
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a-quiet-green-agreement

You're often anxious because you hate the feeling of the seconds slipping away from you. The world is changing every day. And every day you're getting older. But there are still so many things you haven't done. You want to hold on to the sand. But the harder you squeeze, the quicker the sand slips from the cracks between your fingers, until nothing is left…

– Chen Qiufan, from “The Fish of Lijiang,” Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation (Tor, 2018)

#Chen Quifan#The Fish of Lijang#Invisible Planets#time#change#metaphor#sandwich
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gilgai
What is erotic about reading (or writing) is the play of imagination called forth in the space between you and your object of knowledge. Poets and novelists, like lovers, touch that space to life with their metaphors and subterfuge. The edges of the space are the edges of the things you love, whose inconcinnities make your mind move. And there is Eros, nervous realist in this sentimental domain, who acts out of a love of paradox, that is as he folds the beloved object out of sight into a mystery, into a blind point where it can float known and unknown, actual and possible, near and far, desired and drawing you on.

Anne Carson, from Eros the Bittersweet (Dalkey Archive Press, 1998)

#Anne Carson#Eros the Bittersweet#erotic#imagination#inconcinnities#love of paradox