Lately, to my horror I find that my own memories have become rather fuzzy. Old age is upon me! How can?
How very sad, if the little silent movies (there’s never any audio in my memories…just images) that capture your own personal history become trampled under the relentless march of time. Like old, old photographs, the colours bleach away, the details start to fade and soon, all you’re left with are yellowed, vague imprints of a time long past.
To paraphrase an excellent monologue by Susan Sarandon’s character in Shall We Dance on why we marry (a fascinating subject for a future post!); we need witnesses to our lives in order for it to be meaningful. We all crave for at least someone in the audience to notice our existence, our performance amongst the cast of billions on the stage of Life, lest we be consigned to the footnotes OF THE footnotes of History.
Pieces of our personal history lie scattered in the consciousness of others. The answer to the question “Who am I?” can be found not only in our own self-perception and memories but also in the collective mental and/or emotional snapshots held by our parents, siblings, friends, colleagues and lovers.
Since I’ve spent my life brickwalling my heart, I don’t have the luxury of picking from many people’s memories. And since my own recollection has started to get hazy, I figure it’s time I set some of the older memories down here.
Let's start the projector rolling.
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3 comments:
oh goody, lots for me to read when i'm stuck in the office not wanting to work!
anyway, i think it's a really good idea to have some record of important stuff - ok, maybe not save-the-world important, but in the sense of having value to you.
even for physical stuff, it's hard to remember [and having got lots of inherited furniture and stuff in the house, i've often thought i should stick little notes to the relevant pieces detailing their history and ancestry, since i cannot for the life of me remember which great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather used to own that metal locker, or who came here from china with only the wooden chest!!] ... so what more memories, that are ever so much more precious.
Biow:
"shall we dance" issit nice? trying to get hold of it.. :D..
i hope it's a sad movie! i LOVE sad movies.. heh.
Not a sad movie! quite nice, actually, but i read that the original Japanese movie "Shall We Dansu" is much better.
I like sad movies too! =)
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