Memory is a tricky thing. Every time we retrieve something from our past, we recall it through the previous recollection. It is like a hall of imperfect mirrors, each reflection minutely corrupted by the previous reflection, and so on.

Our memory naturally fades somewhat with age and can be completely undone by diseases of the brain. It must be sad to find someone who has forgotten utterly everyone and everything. They are essentially a different person, stripped of the accumulation of life experiences and memories. The storehouse of the mind appears to be empty.

I battle with my own oddly selective memory loss. I have mentioned in previous posts that there is a period in my mid-teens which had become almost a total blank, as if part of a disc had been wiped. I have struggled over the past four or five years to find ways of remembering that period - a formative time if you think about it, being middle high school. There are photos and old school diaries that pop up, conversations with friends and family, objects, songs, even old advertisements from that time. Sometimes they elicit that faint glint of something remembered. Sometimes a whole fully formed memory of something or someone emerges. Is is a true memory, I often wonder, or part of a dream I once had?

This is an ongoing project. Things from that period turn up fairly regularly and in truth, I do go looking for them. Driving past my old family home a few months ago, I was startled to find a park at the end of the road. Sure enough, it triggered certain feelings and glimpses of time spent there. I began to isolate some of those recollections in order to rebuild a solid event. Is is real, or illusory, I cannot tell. But try I must.