My Name Is The Same
Submitted by PiEtRo rOmAni on Wed, 2006-07-05 13:58
Memory.
Assorted images, feelings, smells and sounds.
How it all shapes itself as i recall them, cementing them as being the true facts. But it all cements strongly the more i recall those memories, so it's not that the memory in itself is true, it's more that because i visit them they become firebranded in my memory as being what really happened.
If i'm the sum of everything i've done, every place i've been, everyone i've met or went by, then my recollection (or lack of it) re-builts/re-shapes me. We invent ourselves as we go - Bless! - the same way our cells are entirely replaced every 7 years or so (except for brain and heart cells) meaning our body is not the same matter it was 20 years ago, changing along with us. My body is not the same but i remain quintessencially myself even as i reclaim my past memories, changing them the more i do so.
So where do i start? where do i begin?
I've been telling one story for almost 30 years and the more i do it the more questions i raise about the accuracy of it. If that particular story sets the first draft of the map-of-me and if every time i tell it i'm probably distorting the real facts - because that's the way memory goes - then my story is based on a re-interpretation of what happened. I tell my story as i go, i re-tell it, i'm a shifting ever-changing persona.
What if the decisive facts are a mere selection? or aren't facts at all?
What if i've chosen fiction over reality?
Will it matter?
Do i care?
I choose to be the narrator of my own story. I do the driving. The map reshapes as i go and the roads back are never the same because i wont go back the way i came.
My body + My memory + Time = Me|eM
