Smell seems to stir memories. Like sound and temperature. Your story has those “memories” embedded in an otherwise nondescript day at the office. Intertidal funk haha!! spring warmth, an Outlook ding. Maybe those elements are broad reminders of your work there and not specific to that day.
Can / should we trust our memories? The truth is probably somewhere in between. A version of it happened but you may be blind to other details after 15 years of reinforcing the ghost story.
If a memory casts another person in a super lofty or wicked way (myself included), I try to have a healthy check on that reality.
I thought a bit about “ghosts from the past”…
Your mom’s passing and funeral are memories but your experience of loss is still happening now and in the future, concurrently fading and fortified by stories like these.
I guess the same questions could be asked about how we read any present situation (or text or film). How all our baggage weights what we hear and understand. Do we trust any of our perceptions as “truth” regardless of when they happened? Should we? Depends on how many tequilas :)
Your follow up questions are really interesting and raise a lot a good points about how storytelling affects memory. In my experience, the more you tell a story, the more the details begin to shift and change over time. This person laughed here, so that part of the story becomes embellished. Another part of a story gets no reaction, so you leave that out next time you tell it. The questions I always ask myself is: can I prove this? If you or someone else was to go through this story and fact check it, what would hold up and what would fall apart? That's the documentarian in me I think and a topic for a future post for sure.
Forgetting is one thing but having completely different memories of the same event is what freaks me out, especially when there's no way both versions can be right. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on all this. I'm sure that $50 that S left in the hotel room is tied to some sort of guilt or shame...those are the strongest memories for me. Maybe the emotional weight was different for him then for you?
No, it's tied to being so incredibly pissed that I lost $50. That's like a million dollars to a seven-year-old! I'll also always remember it because when I remembered that I forgot the money under the TV at the hotel we were about to drive through the George Massey Tunnel on the way to the ferry and I was so excited to drive in the tunnel and go on the ferry!!
So many chewy thoughts…
Smell seems to stir memories. Like sound and temperature. Your story has those “memories” embedded in an otherwise nondescript day at the office. Intertidal funk haha!! spring warmth, an Outlook ding. Maybe those elements are broad reminders of your work there and not specific to that day.
Can / should we trust our memories? The truth is probably somewhere in between. A version of it happened but you may be blind to other details after 15 years of reinforcing the ghost story.
If a memory casts another person in a super lofty or wicked way (myself included), I try to have a healthy check on that reality.
I thought a bit about “ghosts from the past”…
Your mom’s passing and funeral are memories but your experience of loss is still happening now and in the future, concurrently fading and fortified by stories like these.
I guess the same questions could be asked about how we read any present situation (or text or film). How all our baggage weights what we hear and understand. Do we trust any of our perceptions as “truth” regardless of when they happened? Should we? Depends on how many tequilas :)
Your follow up questions are really interesting and raise a lot a good points about how storytelling affects memory. In my experience, the more you tell a story, the more the details begin to shift and change over time. This person laughed here, so that part of the story becomes embellished. Another part of a story gets no reaction, so you leave that out next time you tell it. The questions I always ask myself is: can I prove this? If you or someone else was to go through this story and fact check it, what would hold up and what would fall apart? That's the documentarian in me I think and a topic for a future post for sure.
Well, you have made me look forward to the next installment. Thanks Sean.
Very curious to see where this all goes and how/when you might fit into some of these stories. Thanks for reading!!
Forgetting is one thing but having completely different memories of the same event is what freaks me out, especially when there's no way both versions can be right. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on all this. I'm sure that $50 that S left in the hotel room is tied to some sort of guilt or shame...those are the strongest memories for me. Maybe the emotional weight was different for him then for you?
No, it's tied to being so incredibly pissed that I lost $50. That's like a million dollars to a seven-year-old! I'll also always remember it because when I remembered that I forgot the money under the TV at the hotel we were about to drive through the George Massey Tunnel on the way to the ferry and I was so excited to drive in the tunnel and go on the ferry!!