Our secrets are everywhere in the cloud, shuffled from one server farm to another, replicated piece by piece in a thousand places, ready to come together on a microsecond’s notice, ready to shame us with remembrance – despite our desperate forgetting. [Click ‘Random Post’ above – be astonished] … [Read more...]
“Harold Changes His Mind” / Memorable Fancies #1510
31 March, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Harold changed his mind. It was old and he was tired of it, though he thought it still ran pretty well, for a mind that had been around for so many years, clogged with the silt of so many memories, his childhood and lovers and friends. The ads for newer minds sounded attractive, although with his old mind, Harold couldn’t quite understand what the ads were saying about nano and pico and femto and how buying one was such a great investment. Wouldn’t it be nice to understand all this new … [Read more...]
“Memory’s Delight” / Memorable Fancies #1463
9 February, 2016 by Leave a Comment
[“deceit / begins as forgetting” – Louise Glück] ... and terror begins as remembering. <Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: Try Try Again – A novel of deadly U.S. political intrigue from Ashton Publishing Group (Australia).> … [Read more...]
“Forgetting the Future” / Memorable Fancies #1166
9 April, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I can forget the past – in fact, I’ve forgotten most of my own past, and the world’s too. But can I scheme, now, to forget something I plan to do tomorrow? Could there be a potion, a medication, an app for this? Then with a pure heart and righteous mind I could say – I did not do that thing, the act that I’m accused of. When did you say it was? Where? I must have been taking a bath, then, or posting something to my blog. Test me if you doubt: serum-needled or wire-bedecked, pulse and breath … [Read more...]
“Forgetting the Forgettery” / Memorable Fancies #761
3 July, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Sallie went to the Forgettery. She told the them that she wanted to forget all the times she’d shamed herself in front of her friends and lovers. “Fine,” the clinician said, “we can do that.” Then Sallie had second thoughts. “Look,” she said, “those people will still have their own memories of what I did. They will look at me oddly, head-atilt, and say ‘Don’t you remember the time that you...?’ or worse, they will look at me and say nothing. Probably the latter, and I will … [Read more...]
“Forgetting” / Memorable Fancies #690
23 April, 2014 by Leave a Comment
I have this forgetting-project, y’know? There were some awful things in my past. But if I can forget them, they’ll just be gone. The problem is, some other people know what I did and maybe they still remember. I need to make sure they’ve forgotten, too, and then I can get on with my life. I wish I’d never gone to that psychiatrist; now he knows what I did, because I told him. I know he hasn’t forgotten, because he mentions it in every session. He keeps urging me to go to the … [Read more...]
“They Told Me” / A Memorable Fancy #383
25 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[“Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, I was taken far away from the earth – that other people even know this?” – Wittgenstein] They told me I went to another planet and came back. They insisted on interviewing me even though I didn’t have anything to say, because an accident on re-entry had wiped out my memories – they told me. I don’t remember being on another planet. At first I thought they were pulling my leg, or playing some practical joke while watching me with a … [Read more...]
“The Forgetting-Project” / A Memorable Fancy #316
19 April, 2013 by 5 Comments
I did something so awful once, a long time ago, that I want to un-remember it, to un-know it. I went to a psychiatrist last year. He told me to face up to what happened; work through the memory; own it. Repression, he said, is not what I should be doing. But repression is what I’m looking for. The truth isn’t what I want. I don’t need to remember what I did; I’ve remembered that already, time after time. I can’t get it out of my head. Now I just want to remember something else, anything … [Read more...]
“The Names IV – ‘We are forgetting the names of things'” / A Memorable Fancy #282
16 March, 2013 by Leave a Comment
We are forgetting the names of things: how they sound, what they mean. It began about a year ago. Once in a while I remembered a word like “skillet” or “plate,” but then quickly forgot it. We were reduced to saying “You know, those things we use to…” cook in, or place food on, or whatever. But gradually, the phrase “Those things we use to…” became, for us, just another kind of name, and we’re forgetting these, too. We gesture now, wordlessly. We point, we wave our arms silently until the … [Read more...]
“Extinction” / A Memorable Fancy #275
9 March, 2013 by Leave a Comment
“The problem with forgetting,” said the man in the dark suit, “is that you have to remember what you’ve tried so vainly to forget – before you can forget, excise it from your mind scrape by scrape. In fact, that’s the key, isn’t it? ‘Extinction,’ we call it. Over and over and over, remember everything you can about her in the utmost detail, about how you and she were, together, and how you imagined she was when you were alone. The more you feel your pulse rising, your hands shaking, the … [Read more...]
“Our Machines Forget” / A Memorable Fancy #214
26 January, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Our machines have been forgetting. At first a few crashes, but we quickly restored from backups while we still remembered how to do it. Then severe dropouts, parity errors, corrupted backups. It was difficult to know what the machines had forgotten, since the records of what they had known had also disappeared, or become a random assortment of 1’s and 0’s. And we – what did we want the machines to do for us, when we invented them? … [Read more...]
“The Forgettery” / Memorable Fancies #208
14 January, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Today I visited the Forgettery and paid them so that I would forget about – a woman, I think – what was her name? I remember that it was a big effort to forget about her and it took the specialists more than a day or two, but it must have been worth it, right? Or I wouldn’t have done it, wouldn’t have paid the Forgettery so much. But now I’m free of her. If we were to meet at a party, now, I wouldn’t recognize her. But I might be attracted to her again – might go through the same – whatever … [Read more...]
“Forgetting” / A Memorable Fancy #161
15 November, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Tom awoke in the thin grey morning, gradually forgetting his dream. A slither of reason crept into his mind. Yes, he thought, this must be the real world, not that other thing. But I will forget this world, too. … [Read more...]
“The Remitter – I” / A Memorable Fancy #110
19 September, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Rolf set himself up as an expert in deleting memories from people who longed to forget. “Sin Remitter” was his adopted title. All the terrible things you did, and your memories of them, and your memories of remembering them, and – you get the idea – all gone. Customers thronged to him. A few left without any memories of anything, their sins having been so pervasive. They wandered the city parks, wondering what terrible things they had done. A few sought forgiveness, but had nothing to confess … [Read more...]
“The End of Tomorrow” / A Memorable Fancy #096
4 September, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Today is Memories Day. It comes once a year and we know, from bitter memory, how this day will go. Marie comes down to breakfast, a face of despair. She sits wordless, doesn’t eat her eggs. Our children, Anne and Helene, stumble in from their bedrooms, swathed in tears. I try to comfort them. Since they are four and six years old (Anne the older), they will forget by the end of tomorrow. But Marie and I will not forget who we are. Since I’m the daddy I must be strong, not feel what the … [Read more...]
“The Actor Dreams – III” / A Memorable Fancy #074
13 August, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The actor dreams about the desperate gestures of the stage manager, the facial twitches of the other actors as they hint to him what his next lines are, the lines he has forgotten, the lines he never knew ... … [Read more...]
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